Facebook’s September 28 announcement of a hack that compromised 50 million accounts will likely become part of a growing set of breaches that is moving Congress to consider regulation. The Facebook statement following the hack said that “attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code” and that “this allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens which they could then use to take over people’s accounts.” The millions of impacted accounts were logged out, leaving them wondering what had happened and increasing the publicity of the breach. A number of legislators have called for investigations, with a former associate general counsel at the NSA predicting that “there will be more and more investigations and calls for regulation both within the U.S. and overseas.” He argues, however, that these regulations should focus on outcomes or process, as requiring particular encryptions or other solutions would quickly become obsolete and render such regulations impractical. 

Source: Massive Facebook breach spurs calls for regulation