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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

#42
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Both this and what Meta said reminds me of "Clarke and Dawe - The Front Fell Off" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM ) I also can't believe the people who were involved with writing this response from Meta, didn't realize how obviously bad it sounds. It's like there is no humans working and writing there anymore.

I was reminded of the Murray Walker quote. “There's nothing wrong with the car except it's on fire”

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

#44
post #5

https://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

I’m guessing they have no functional human support for the people who had their accounts stolen. I get the impression Meta didn’t know this was happening until they were contacted by the media.

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

#45
post #35

>AI-assisted account recovery system oh no...Meta what are you doing

That sweet koolaid taste, how could one resist?

...They really ahouldn't have, and I wonder how this will affect all the big AI IPOs. After all, Meta is one of the big players in the space. Surely if they can't do it right, then...

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

#46

I got a suspicious password reset request email today from Meta but it landed in my inbox. Luckily I have MFA and after checking audit logs inside IG upon logging in, I did not see anything suspicious.

2FA did not help according to the primary finding

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48359102

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

#47
post #36
post #29

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... )

Did you create the account separately? Or as an asset of your main Meta account (like Meta Business Suite)? I'm creating the accounts in Meta Business Suite, so I would have a recourse with my main personal account which can be linked to some adspend, so I'm assuming it will have better support channels than accounts created through an end-user interface.

This was probably my mistake. This is the first time I've ever done this so I just set up an account like a regular user. I didn't figure out how to link it with my Meta Business Suite until it was too late.

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

#48
post #26

Why was 'can a user request a different email' not literally the first test that comes to mind when making something like this? Do they not test anything because the scale is too big?

Because software professionals are conflating simplicity of user experience with simplicity of dev experience.

During development they were likely not thinking of the user experience, nor even the support agent experience, but on their development experience, they asked the LLM to develop the chatbot, and it worked, and the speed was documented and reported upstream so that shareholders invest, if there is any forethought it would go against the narrative of AI becoming the engineer or 100xing productivity.

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

#49

"abusing" by using it's built in insecurity to do insecure things. It's like, people abusing an open door. "Guys, just because we left the door open to your bedroom doesn't mean we're responsible". God can only hope this is a business ending lawsuit.

It won’t be.

also this is more like them leaving the keys in the door, then someone comes along, uses the keys, and steals all your stuff.

truthfully, no equipment is actually defective in this scenario eh?

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

#50
post #30
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"

"operation successful, patient dead."
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