The hacker who went too far

20 Aug 2013

A researcher who hacked into Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg's profile to expose a security flaw won't get the usual reward.

Though Facebook offers rewards for people who find security weaknesses, it seems Palestinian researcher Khalil Shreateh went too far by posting the information on Zuckerberg's own profile page.

Shreateh said on his blog that he had found a way for Facebook users to circumvent security and modify a user's timeline.

He said he took the unusual step of hacking into Zuckerberg's profile after being ignored by the Facebook security team. "So i did post to Mark Zuckerberg's timeline as those pictures show," he said, including screen shots of the post.

"Dear Mark Zuckerberg," he wrote. "First sorry for breaking your privacy and posting to your wall, i had no other choice to make after all the reports I sent to Facebook team. My name is KHALIL from Palestine."

His reward for exposing the flaw was having his Facebook account disabled. He later got a message saying: "We are unfortunately not able to pay you for this vulnerability because your actions violated our terms of service. We do hope, however, that you continue to work with us to find vulnerabilities in the site."

Facebook says it appreciates help with security but not by hacking into user accounts.

Source: Sapa-AFP via I-Net Bridge

Source: I-Net Bridge

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