Facebook has moved quickly to shut down a loophole which made some accounts accessible without a password. The bug was exposed in a message posted to the Hacker News website.

The message contained a search string that, when used on Google, returned a list of links to 1.32 million Facebook accounts. In some cases clicking on a link logged in to that account without the need for a password. All the links exposed the email addresses of Facebook users.

The message posted to Hacker News used a search syntax that exposed a system used by Facebook that lets users quickly log back in to their account. Email alerts about status updates and notifications often contain a link that lets a user of the social network respond quickly by clicking it to log in in to their account.

Source: BBC News