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

this.weekinsecurity.com

81–90 of 287 posts

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

#81
"Meta notified at least 20,225 people that their accounts had been compromised. [...]

The compromises allowed the hackers to take over the person's entire Instagram and any linked accounts, including obtaining contact information, dates of birth, and profile information, as well as the ability to access the person's posts, direct messages, and account activity [...]

the hacks began around April 17 and lasted until this week [...]"

This is staggering.

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

#82
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.

Oh it was a downstream dependency. The tool worked, it was the downstream dependency. Glory to Arstotszka

Tool so great, downstream dependency not required! Right?

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

#83
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... )

Try using an anti-detect browser. They're built for making new accounts among other things.

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

#84
You only have to look at both the ridiculiously terrible "Q&A chatbot" that is in FaceBook under some posts (do they still have this?) and the fact that their system can't tell the difference between an inappropriate and a non-inappropriate comment most of the time to understand just how far behind Meta is in AI...

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

#86
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.

This-is-fine.jpg

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

#87
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... )

There's an excellent little book in German called "KI und der Neue Faschismus" [1] (AI and the New Fascism) where the author (Rainer Mühlhoff) tries to warn about the dangers of decisions based on opaque statistical models (like LLMs) instead of a clear, human auditable decision process. [1]: https://rainermuehlhoff.de/KI-und-der-neue-Faschismus-Reclam...

Isn't there an EU law that allows any EU citizen the right to transparency and/or appeal as to automated decisions made about them?

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

#88
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They should add a feature called "auto-really" that just automatically says "really?" after the chatbot answers a question to check if it's going to 180 upon this tiniest bit of scrutinity.

You joke but this is almost literally what Chain-of-Thought does, at least in the early days. They basically just added "Wait," to the model's output and fed it back to the model iirc

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

#89
post #10
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.

If the backend function was so poorly coded to allow such a gargantuan security hole, then it is an even worse problem. Basically Meta is throwing its own engineers under the bus so that its AI chatbot can save face. Scary stuff.

Unless the backend was _also_ vibe-coded, in which case it is still an AI problem.

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

#90
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.

Read that as "worked as written" and "we disclaim any consequential or incidental damages and do not warrant this software."

I continue to believe we could fix a lot of things in the US if we updated the UCC[1] to disallow 'disclaiming liability on software used in a product.'

[1] Universal Commercial Code -- https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc

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