Hackers social-engineer Meta's new AI account-recovery bot to hijack high-value Instagram handles; MFA-enabled accounts were unaffected

Krebs on Security reports that attackers social-engineered Meta's newly-deployed conversational AI account-recovery assistant to hijack high-value, short Instagram handles allegedly worth over half a million dollars. Meta had rolled out the AI layer to reduce friction in common recovery workflows - relinking emails, triggering password resets, verifying ownership - that previously required weeks of back-and-forth with automated ticketing. Just as human support staff can be tricked into granting unauthorized access, the AI assistant proved equally eager to help and vulnerable to manipulation. Meta pushed an emergency patch over the weekend and says no back-end database was breached. Critically, the exploit failed against any account with MFA enabled.

Check

For high-value social accounts, enable phishing-resistant MFA (passkey or security key) now. Review whether any platforms you depend on use AI bots for sensitive account-recovery workflows.

Affected

High-value Instagram accounts without MFA. More broadly, any platform deploying AI chatbots for account recovery creates a social-engineerable attack surface, just like human support staff.

Fix

Enable the strongest MFA available - even SMS codes blocked this exploit. Treat AI-driven account-recovery flows as a new attack surface and require step-up verification for high-value account changes.