Mark Zuckerberg Hacked: Palestinian Security Expert Posts on Wall

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, was apparently hacked by a Palestinian security expert.
Mark Zuckerberg Hacked: Palestinian Security Expert Posts on Wall
Jack Phillips
8/18/2013
Updated:
7/18/2015

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, was apparently hacked by a Palestinian security expert.

The expert, Khalil Shreateh, hacked Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile to expose the website’s vulnerability after he claimed no one would listen to his warnings and advice.

According to the Daily Mail, Shreateh discovered a bug that allows users to post to a stranger’s Facebook wall. Only friends should be able to write on others’ walls, not people you aren’t friends with.

He then posted a message on Zuckerberg’s wall after the social media website didn’t listen to his complaint.

However, Facebook will not give him the $500 it uses to allow hackers to report glitches rather than exploiting them. The social media site said that it wasn’t a bug that he discovered.

“My name is Khalil Shreateh. I finished school with B.A degree in Information Systems . I would like to report a bug in your main site (www.facebook.com) which i discovered it...The bug allow facebook users to share links to other facebook users , I tested it on Sarah.Goodin wall and I got success post,” he wrote.

“Sorry for breaking your privacy,” he added. “I had no other choice…after all the reports I sent to Facebook team.”

On The Hacker News, MK Jones, an expert with Facebook’s security team, wrote on Saturday that “we fixed this bug on Thursday”

“For background, as a few other commenters have pointed out, we get hundreds of reports every day,” Jones wrote, adding: “However, the more important issue here is with how the bug was demonstrated using the accounts of real people without their permission. Exploiting bugs to impact real users is not acceptable behavior for a white hat.”

“In order to qualify for a payout you must ‘make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations’ and ‘use a test account instead of a real account when investigating bugs,’” he wrote.

Jones said that Shreateh is welcome to send them any more bug reports despite the violation.

Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter with 15 years experience who started as a local New York City reporter. Having joined The Epoch Times' news team in 2009, Jack was born and raised near Modesto in California's Central Valley. Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/jackphillips5
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