Social media hacking and trolling seems to be becoming a regular feature in the headlines these days.
The latest victim of a social network hack is Mr Facebook himself, Mark Zuckerberg.
After a Palestinian computer expert reported a bug to Facebook’s security team, it seemed they weren’t interested, so Khalil Shreateh forced his point by demonstrating what he could do the glitch.
The bug allowed him, and anyone else, to write on anyone’s Facebook wall, whether you had been accepted as a friend, or not. So Shreateh demonstrated the glitch by posting on Zuckerberg’s wall, detailing the issue.
Of course, now the security team was interested.
Facebook operate on a bounty system as an incentive to hackers who may want to exploit the system. Those who report a validated bug are usually met with a $500 reward in exchange for not abusing the site.
But despite Shreateh insisting he "had no other choice" when he took to the Facebook founder’s wall, he will not receive the reward as his attempts were not made in good faith and violated the site’s terms of the service.
However, having discovered and exploited this bug, I have no doubt that IT security industry professionals will be looking to hire him.
In fact, Facebook itself has confirmed that it will pay out for future reports from Shreateh, if he’s learnt to play by the rules.
