When Will Hackers Take Down Facebook?

A large hack of Facebook would not mean a great deal in terms of the revenue posted by America’s largest companies each quarter. In the most recent quarter, Facebook reported revenue of $3.2 billion. Investors in Facebook would suffer. Its market cap sits at just over $200 billion.

Facebook’s description of itself hints as the effects of a large hack:

Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

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Pew recently described the power of Facebook as a distribution system:

Last month’s report from the Pew Research Center on political polarization and media habits shows that social media is a prominent way people learn about government and politics. Indeed, this recent survey shows that 48% of internet-using adults reported getting news from Facebook in the previous week, rivaling well-known news media organizations. New data released here support the notion that two of the most prominent social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, function very differently as sources of political information.

The research firm’s description covers Facebook’s use in America, not elsewhere across the world.

The second reason a large hack o Facebook would trigger huge concern is the supposition that it devotes a substantial amount of money and resources to keep its network safe, as well as member files that include personal information and often financial data like credit card numbers. Facebook can ill-afford an outage that lasts for any long period, or one that compromises its members’ financial data.

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The argument that Facebook eventually will suffer a major hack is that cyber-criminals have been able to hack other large consumer sites, and even online systems used by the U.S. government and some of America’s largest corporations.

If hackers want to take down what is perhaps the most visible network in the world and prove how adept they are at work that keeps no part of the Internet safe, they will hack Facebook.