San Francisco, Mar 21: Facebook on Thursday admitted that millions of passwords were stored in plain text on its internal servers, a security slip that left them readable by the social networking giant's employees.

"To be clear, these passwords were never visible to anyone outside of Facebook and we have found no evidence to date that anyone internally abused or improperly accessed them," vice president of engineering, security, and privacy Pedro Canahuati said in a blog post.

The blunder was uncovered during a routine security review early this year, according to Canahuati.

He said that the Silicon Valley company expected to notify hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users; tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users whose passwords may have been vulnerable to prying eyes.

The basic security shortcoming was revealed on the heels of a series of controversies centered on whether Facebook properly safeguards the privacy and data of its users.

The basic data defense mistake would also appear contrary to the "Hacker Way" mantra that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has espoused at the social network.

"One Hacker Way" is the main address of Facebook's vast campus in the California city of Menlo Park.

Brian Krebs of security news website KrebsOnSecurity.com cited an unnamed Facebook source as saying the internal investigation had so far indicated that as many as 600 million users of the social network had account passwords stored in plain text files searchable by more than 20,000 employees.

The exact number has yet to be determined, but archives with unencrypted user passwords were found dating back to the year 2012, according to Krebs.

"We have fixed these issues and as a precaution we will be notifying everyone whose passwords we have found were stored in this way," Canahuati said.

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Bengaluru: Ayush Mhatre's 94 and Ravindra Jadeja's 77 not out went in vain as Royal Challengers Bengaluru pipped Chennai Super Kings by two runs in their IPL match here on Saturday.

Chasing 214, CSK scored 211 for 5 in their 20 overs.

Mhatre scored a 48-ball 94 with five sixes and nine fours while adding 114 runs with Jadeja (77 not out off 45 balls, 8x4s, 2x6s) for the second wicket.

For RCB, Lungi Ngidi returned with figures of 3/30.

Earlier, half-centuries from Jacob Bethell (55), Virat Kohli (62) and Romario Shepherd (53 not out) took RCB to 213 for five.

While Bethell and Kohli put on 97 runs for the opening wicket to set a platform, Shepherd blasted four fours and six sixes to make 53 not out off only 14 balls, recording the fastest fifty of the season and joint second-fastest overall.

For CSK, Matheesha Pathirana found his rhythm and lengths to return 3-0-36-3.

Brief scores:

RCB: 213 for 5 in 20 overs (Jacob Bethell 55, Virat Kohli 62, Romario Shepherd 53 not out; Matheesha Pathirana 3/36).

CSK: 211 for 5 in 20 overs (Ayush Mhatre 94, Ravindra Jadeja 77 not out; Lungi Ngidi 3/30).