Hackers could have changed Facebook Messenger chat logs

Here's a Facebook hack straight from the pages of the novel 1984: A way to rewrite the record of the past.

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past," went the ruling party's slogan in George Orwell's dystopian novel.

Security researchers have found a way to control the past, by altering Facebook's logs of online chats conducted through its website and Messenger App.

Such modified logs could be used to control the future, the researchers suggest, by using them to commit fraud, to falsify evidence in legal investigations, or to introduce malware onto a PC or phone.

Roman Zaikin of Check Point Software Technologies discovered a flaw in Facebook's chat system that made it possible for an attacker to modify or remove any sent message, photo, file or link in a conversation they were part of.

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