False warnings about hackers invading Facebook accounts have been shared since at least 2011. Some of them involve insulting messages that are purportedly posted to the walls of friends of the rightful owners of those accounts. The copy-and-paste text appears in varying forms in emails and social media posts. For example, this variation from 2021 claimed that a "new hack on Facebook" aimed to "hurt and offend" friends:
WARNING EVERYBODY: New hackers on Facebook and what they write is aggression from you and it's insulting. It's really nasty and it appears to come from you. You do not see it, but your friends do. One result of this can be that you will be deleted on your friends list. I just want to say, if you get something that is offensive, malicious, vulgar, etc., it is ABSOLUTELY NOT from me! Copy this and let your friends know. If you get anything like this from me, please tell me and report it immediately to Facebook. Apparently it can come in messages too. Everyone knows me and knows how I am, so please don't be fooled! PLEASE do NOT share! "COPY AND PASTE" ONLY!
2012 hacker facebook
Facebook accounts can be retooled by hackers to issue missives their actual owners would never send. The posting of derogatory notes on friends' walls is one example. However, the mechanism whereby malcontents gain such control is one of social engineering rather than computer wizardry. There is no special programming trick the ill-intentioned master that allows them to seize control of social media accounts. Further, there is no way for a "new hack on Facebook" to randomly access personal accounts to use them to send insulting and/or sexual messages in others' names. (So-called Facebook "pirates" might have been able to achieve a similar effect. However, they did so by creating new accounts that impersonate existing accounts, not by "hacking" into the latter.)
(Local businesses, you can argue, are much more important to our long-term economic well-being that the sort of global behemoths which are, almost without doubt, better placed to defend themselves against hackers anyway.)
Ultimately the "I hacked to expose vulnerabilities" defence has been overused now and I can see why they would stamp out on it, if they didn't every malicious hacker under the sun would be claiming to do it to "highlight vulnerabilities".
Didn't Mark Zuckerman do exactly the same thing, hacking into Harvard's server, just before he thought up the idea of facebook. He should have welcomed this guy into the fold!And is $200,000 (126,400) such a great deal of money to a company worth billions.Shame on facebook
I have a huge problem with the fact that a single company that is entrusted to secure the personal data of " 845 million monthly active users at the end of December 2011" Was hacked by a student from his bedroom.. and was able to penetrate so deeply to be able to access "sensitive and confidential information" without being detected.Maybe they should investigate whether facebook is adequately protecting the personal data of the Billions of active accounts they have. I'm sure that investigation would cost facebook MUCH more than $200K
Dealing with the Aftermath: how vague. Do they mean fixing their own vulnerability, or repairing something that was done by this hacker? If it's just fixing their own problem (that the hacker did not create), then the amount is irrelevant to the case. It took them whatever it took them to make things right, and that cost is on them. If this number reflects the overreaction of overcomplicated agencies to work in concert to find a small player without criminal ties nor record, then that has no impact at all on the damage done or not.
Well at least while in Jail he can document his findings, and post other possible vulerabilities he found in Facebook that he didn't exploit yet, and no need to ship them off to Facebook, but leave them wide open, since he can't further investigate these. This is pretty much stating that their is no ethnical hacking guidlines. Might as well not find and correct these, but leave the vulerabilities for someone who will bring malicious intent, and not get caught. Do you really think that a malicious hacker will be attempting to hack a small business over one with thousands of users?
I'm not sure why Sophos refers to this convicted criminal as an "ethical" hacker, but that headline seems to be misleading most of the people who are posting here. In fact, there is no evidence of ethical hacking in this case other than the unsubstantiated claim of the defendant after he got caught. The judge rejected that defense because the evidence showed the defendant had malicious intent, stole another's identity, engaged in extensive and destructive efforts to remain undiscovered and anonymous, made no effort to contact Facebook with his discoveries, and even denied involvement when initially questioned.
His attempt to claim he intended responsible disclosure only after faced with criminal action is insulting to the community of responsible security researchers. Facebook has a really ambitious whitehat program that not only gives immunity to ethical hackers who practice responsible disclosure but also rewards them with cash. The company has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to ethical hackers in the last six months alone. You can read about that program here:
In Facebook's regulatory filing for an initial public offering of stock, CEO Mark Zuckerberg included a letter to potential investors about the company's thinking. He described it as a social mission to make the world more open and connected. He also discussed Facebook's approach to culture and management in Wednesday's letter: googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2'); ); "As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way."The word `hacker' has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I've met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world."The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it - often in the face of people who say it's impossible or are content with the status quo."Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words `Done is better than perfect' painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping."Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There's a hacker mantra that you'll hear a lot around Facebook offices: `Code wins arguments.'"Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win - not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people."To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have. At the end, the whole team gets together and looks at everything that has been built. Many of our most successful products came out of hackathons, including Timeline, chat, video, our mobile development framework and some of our most important infrastructure like the HipHop compiler."To make sure all our engineers share this approach, we require all new engineers - even managers whose primary job will not be to write code - to go through a program called Bootcamp where they learn our codebase, our tools and our approach. There are a lot of folks in the industry who manage engineers and don't want to code themselves, but the type of hands-on people we're looking for are willing and able to go through Bootcamp." 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- In a letter to investors included in Facebook's IPO filing, CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined his philosophy for running what has become a multi-billion-dollar business. At core of that philosophy: Love your hackers.
"We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way," Zuckerberg wrote in the filing. "There's a hacker mantra that you'll hear a lot around Facebook offices: 'Code wins arguments.'"
Facebook will go public hacker style with an all-night software bending bash to culminate with co-founder Mark Zuckerberg remotely ringing the Nasdaq opening bell on Friday, reports said. googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2'); ); Employees were signing up for a "hackathon" to start late Thursday at Facebook's offices in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park and continued until the social network's initial public offering of stock (IPO), according to tech news websites TechCrunch and All Things Digital."Hackathons are a big tradition at Facebook," the company explained on a Facebook page devoted to the events."They serve as the foundation for some great (and not so great) ideas," the message at facebook.com/hackathon continued."It gives our employees the opportunity to try out new ideas and collaborate with other people in a fun environment."Despite the negative image given to hacking by cyber criminals and spies, software savants defend the term as coming from the innocent practice of using computer codes in creative new ways.Facebook's campus, which was formerly home to Sun Microsystems, even has a street named "Hacker Way" and a building bearing the sign "The Hacker Company," where Zuckerberg gives talks about being innovative with software.Zuckerberg even explained the company's devotion to "the hacker way" in paperwork filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation for the IPO. (c) 2012 AFP 2ff7e9595c
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