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Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot

this.weekinsecurity.com

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Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot

#21

Post by theptip »

nkrisc wrote: post #16
Cyan488 wrote: post #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.

The tool worked correctly and as intended, but due to a bug it did not work correctly nor as intended.

Sounds like they are saying the agent did not malfunction, and this vuln could have been triggered by a human support agent too.

Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot

#22

Post by [deleted] »

Cpoll wrote: post #10
Cyan488 wrote: post #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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot

#23

Post by dmoose »

nico wrote: post #11
Cyan488 wrote: post #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.

That sounds a lot like the justifications Claude and ChatGPT give when confronted about something they did wrong, or when asked to provide a customer support response about software issues

I've lost track of the number of times Claude has basically said "it was like that when i got here" in the face of a clearly bogus choice and easily disproved explanation.

Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot

#25

Post by tomkarho »

Cyan488 wrote: post #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.

How very Wernher von Braun of them.

Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot

#27

Post by duskwuff »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #18
Cpoll wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why on earth would the backend function even take an email? Or perhaps said different: use the submitted info to identify the account; send any sensitive messages (recovery codes, password resets whatever) to only the contact info on file. If the chat bot can send such email it should do so via an API that sends only to contact info on file for the associated account and not to an email that's provided by the bot.

> Why on earth would the backend function even take an email?

In principle, it could be designed to do so to handle cases where a new email address has been confirmed out of band, e.g. for an account representing a company or a political office. But that's a relatively unusual situation, not something you'd want to be available to every user writing in. (Even if you had an all-human support department, this sort of functionality would only be available to a select few agents.)

Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot

#28

Post by TZubiri »

Cyan488 wrote: post #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.

Of course.

What I gather is that this internal tool was used by human support agents, and it was their responsibility to verify the email adresses and general validity of a claim.

But when implementing AGI TM that was overseen, maybe the oversight in the separate code path was a 'bug', but the mistake was making the chatbot obviously, if the separate code path had a bug, then it had become ossified into a feature, and it was internal, not exposed to the public.

This is an external communication, to save face sure, but if this is the internal excuse, it would be absolutely the wrong RCA and it reads as if the one who made the mistake is not admitting they made their mistake. Which to be honest, just making the mistake is enough to get fired, but not admitting it is enough to get ultra fired.

Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot

#29

Post by webbdev »

Meanwhile an account I created for a new product was permanently disabled by an automated system with no path for me to appeal to a human.

(If anyone at Meta/Instagram sees this I wrote a brief blog post with the details. Please help! https://addisonwebb.com/blog/2026-06-05-Can%20Someone%20at%2... )

Re: Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot

#30

Post by vb-8448 »

Cyan488 wrote: post #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.

In italian we say "l'operazione è riuscita perfettamente, ma il paziente è morto" -> "the surgery was a complete success, but the patient died"
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