Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
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Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
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Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
#2Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
#3> "The tool itself worked properly and functioned as intended; however due to a bug in a separate code path, the system did not properly verify that the email address provided by the individual requesting a password reset matched the email address associated with that user’s Instagram account," said Meta in its breach notice.
I'm not sure "worked properly" and "as intended" accurately describe this situation.
Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
#4This was on hacker news a few days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48359102) - description of the “hack”, not the cockamamie confirmation by Meta.
Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
#5https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28202858-meta-ai-ag-... https://www.maine.gov/agviewer/content/ag/985235c7-cb95-4be2...
> Date(s) Breach Occured: 04/17/2026
> Date Breach Discovered: 05-31-2026
Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
#6> "The tool itself worked properly and functioned as intended; however due to a bug in a separate code path, the system did not properly verify that the email address provided by the individual requesting a password reset matched the email address associated with that user’s Instagram account," said Meta in its breach notice. I'm not sure "worked properly" and "as intended" accurately describe this situation.
I like to dunk on Meta as much as the next guy, but I think this makes sense: deterministic verification like this is not, and should never be, the LLM’s job. The tools it has access to should enforce the permissions layer, ensuring that the LLM can never perform actions the user themselves should not be allowed to perform. In this case, the tool failed to do that.
Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
#7> "The tool itself worked properly and functioned as intended; however due to a bug in a separate code path, the system did not properly verify that the email address provided by the individual requesting a password reset matched the email address associated with that user’s Instagram account," said Meta in its breach notice. I'm not sure "worked properly" and "as intended" accurately describe this situation.
Maybe they’re communicating exactly what it sounds like and are just owning up to being complete morons?
Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
#8> "The tool itself worked properly and functioned as intended; however due to a bug in a separate code path, the system did not properly verify that the email address provided by the individual requesting a password reset matched the email address associated with that user’s Instagram account," said Meta in its breach notice. I'm not sure "worked properly" and "as intended" accurately describe this situation.
I like to dunk on Meta as much as the next guy, but I think this makes sense: deterministic verification like this is not, and should never be, the LLM’s job. The tools it has access to should enforce the permissions layer, ensuring that the LLM can never perform actions the user themselves should not be allowed to perform. In this case, the tool failed to do that.
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Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
#9> "The tool itself worked properly and functioned as intended; however due to a bug in a separate code path, the system did not properly verify that the email address provided by the individual requesting a password reset matched the email address associated with that user’s Instagram account," said Meta in its breach notice. I'm not sure "worked properly" and "as intended" accurately describe this situation.
Oh it was a downstream dependency. The tool worked, it was the downstream dependency. Glory to Arstotszka
Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
#10> "The tool itself worked properly and functioned as intended; however due to a bug in a separate code path, the system did not properly verify that the email address provided by the individual requesting a password reset matched the email address associated with that user’s Instagram account," said Meta in its breach notice. I'm not sure "worked properly" and "as intended" accurately describe this situation.
The argument here is that the AI is a glorified input page. The input field asks for your username and email and sends it to a backend function. Such an input page is working as intended.
The problem is when the backend function doesn't verify that the email matches the username.