LinkedIn Refresh Creates New Professional Communities for Business

A month after announcing the redesign of its Groups platform, LinkedIn unveiled Groups Experiences to build a shared space for professional communities.

LinkedIn Groups Relaunch

On its blog, LinkedIn said the new platform was built from the ground up after hearing how important Groups was for its users. The improvements will bring connectivity, communications, and collaboration tools the company has been developing front and center in the website and app.

The integration of these tools will give the 562 plus million users on LinkedIn more ways to find the resources they need and be part of groups they are interested in.

For small business owners, Groups offers a private space where likeminded individuals with similar industry affiliations can share experiences, new skill sets, developments and more. It is also a valuable resource for finding good candidates for businesses looking to make their next hire.

The New Group Experiences

One of the most requested feedbacks was to have more ways to carry out engaging conversations. Group administrators wanted better ways for their members to communicate and participate with each other.

Group members can now post different types of media such as videos and images to enrich their conversations. And when someone comments on your post, you will be notified so you can respond as soon as possible. The notification also applies anytime users request to join your group.

All of these features can be accessed on the LinkedIn Android and iOS app so you can respond no matter where you are. Group admins can message members, accept a request for joining, or delete posts which are not following group rules from their mobile device.

In addition to these features, LinkedIn said coming soon you will be able to navigate to your groups with less effort, keep the conversation going from your LinkedIn Feed, and discover new groups that match your interests easily.

According to the blog, there will be more features in the coming months including new moderation tools for admins.

The new LinkedIn Groups experience is being rolled out now. Groups will be migrated automatically to the new platform on desktop and mobile.

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50 Million Facebook Accounts Compromised, Is Your Business Page Safe?

The security breach which was discovered by Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) engineers on September 25 allowed the attackers to take direct control over user accounts; around 50 million of them to be exact.

The Latest Facebook Security Breach

In addition to the 50 million, Facebook also said there were another 40 million accounts which were potentially vulnerable. All said, the company logged out 90 million accounts to prevent further damage.

In a security update, Facebook admitted the attack was able to exploit the complex interaction of multiple issues in its code. This came about from a change the company made to its video uploading feature in July of 2017 affecting the “View As” feature.

Facebook said, “The attackers not only needed to find this vulnerability and use it to get an access token, they then had to pivot from that account to others to steal more tokens.”

This attack couldn’t have come at a worse time for Facebook. The company is trying to ratchet up its security before the upcoming mid-term elections while at the same time trying to recover from the Cambridge Analytica fiasco in which data from about 87 million users was shared with a political consulting agency.

The View As Feature

The View As feature allows users to see how a profile looks to other people.

The attackers were able to exploit three flaws or bugs in the “View As” feature. In the same security update, Pedro Canahuati, Vice President of Engineering, Security and Privacy, listed those flaws as follows:

1. View As incorrectly provided the opportunity to post a video.
2. A new version of the video uploader (the interface that would be presented as a result of the first bug), introduced in July 2017, incorrectly generated an access token that had the permissions of the Facebook mobile app.
3. When the video uploader appeared as part of View As, it generated the access token NOT for the viewer, but for the user the viewer was looking up.
4. Facebook said it has turned off the View As feature temporarily while it conducts a security review.

Tricking Facebook to Issue Access Tokens

With this vulnerability, the attackers were able to trick Facebook into issuing them access tokens. This gave them access to user accounts as if they were the user.

They also had access to services the user might’ve registered for using Facebook such as Airbnb, Spotify, Tinder or other apps and games.

Facebook has reset the access tokens of the 50 million accounts that were affected as well as the additional 40 million accounts that might’ve been vulnerable.

If your account was one of the 90 million affected by this incident, you will be prompted to re-login on Facebook and any linked accounts.

Who is Responsible?

In a conference call (PDF) Guy Rosen, Vice President of Product Management for Facebook said the company has notified law enforcement and is working with the FBI.

As to who is responsible, Rosen goes on to say it is hard to discover who was behind the attack, adding “We may never know.”

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