Mark Zukerberg’s Profile Hacked By A White Hat Hacker
A Palestinian white hat hacker posted a Facebook security issue on the Social Networks’ CEO Mark Zukerberg’s profile a week ago, in an attempt to prove the security extent of the bugs he had found, to the company. Initial bug reporting attempts by him were not acknowledged by the Facebook team.
The hacker, who uses the name of ‘Khalil’, discovered an issue that allowed users to make posts to others’ Timeline pages without even being connected to them on Facebook. Khalil said he tried reporting it to the security team earlier in the week, but as it was not acknowledged. Consequently, he made the post on Zuckerberg’s wall by using the security bug he reported for, probably the only way he could think of getting security’s attention.
It certainly did. The security flaw was fixed as of Thursday, shortly after Khalil posted to Zuckerberg’s page. A post made by a Facebook security team member on Web forum Hacker News said that Khalil’s limited English skills and lack of complete information made it difficult for the team to immediately respond.
The reason could also be because Facebook receives too many bugs each day thanks to the Bug Bounty Program, which pays hackers for sharing the security related bugs.
Despite of all this, Facebook admitted its failure to follow up in its dealings with Khalil.
“We should have pushed back asking for more details here,” Facebook software engineer Matt Jones
The company said that they encourage further bug reports from Khalil and other White Hat hackers looking to help the site.
