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More than 1MM Facebook accounts exposed

google.com

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Re: More than 1MM Facebook accounts exposed

#71
post #55

Common misinterpretation on how Google handle `Disallow` in robots.txt Q. If I block Google from crawling a page using a robots.txt disallow directive, will it disappear from search results? [1] robots.txt Disallow does not guarantee that a page will not appear in results: Google may still decide, based on external information such as incoming links, that it is relevant. If you wish to explicitly block a page from be…

" Common misinterpretation on how Google handle `Disallow` in robots.txt"

Here is why I think this happened: http://www.facebook.com/humans.txt

;)

Re: More than 1MM Facebook accounts exposed

#73
My name is Matt Jones, and I work on the Facbook security team that looked into this tonight. We only send these URLs to the email address of the account owner for their ease of use and never make them publicly available. Even then we put protection in place to reduce the likelihood that anyone else could click through to the account.

For a search engine to come across these links, the content of the emails would need to have been posted online (e.g. via throwaway email sites, as someone pointed out - or people whose email addresses go to email lists with online archives).

As jpadvo surmised, the nonces expire after a period of time. They also only work for certain users, and even then we run additional security checks to make sure it looks like the account owner who's logging in. Regardless, due to some of these links being disclosed, we've turned the feature off until we can better ensure its security for users whose email contents are publicly visible. We are also securing the accounts of anyone who recently logged in through this flow.

In the future if you run into something that looks like a security problem with Facebook, feel free to disclose it responsibly through our whitehat program: https://www.facebook.com/whitehat. That way, in addition to making some money, you can avoid a bunch of script kiddies exploiting whatever the issue is that you've found.

Re: More than 1MM Facebook accounts exposed

#74
Thank you for exposing this. Much appreciated. Here's one more - The last time I checked, Facebook revealed 'what you liked' to search engines like Google. For example, if you search for your name inside double quotes like this - "Your Name" you will see your name listed virtually on every single page you liked, for example, If you had liked Sony's Facebook fan page, then your name would appear in the search results something like this - "[Your name] and 8 others like this"

That's strange because I did tell Facebook under my account settings NOT to list my profile or my name on Search engines.

To summarize - So be careful with what you 'like', because it really just takes a Google search to find out your interests. This could (potentially) be a problem if you are actively seeking employment (and if you had 'liked' some crazy stuff) or if you have a crazy girlfriend.

Re: More than 1MM Facebook accounts exposed

#75
post #55

Common misinterpretation on how Google handle `Disallow` in robots.txt Q. If I block Google from crawling a page using a robots.txt disallow directive, will it disappear from search results? [1] robots.txt Disallow does not guarantee that a page will not appear in results: Google may still decide, based on external information such as incoming links, that it is relevant. If you wish to explicitly block a page from be…

You can do access control on the contents of HTTP_REFERER: if the browser visits a page in your robots.txt by following a Google link, serve them up a 403 forbidden. (In Apache 2.4, this can all be done using mod_authz_core.)

You could maybe say in your 403 forbidden message that Google has been forbidden from indexing the page (use ErrorDocument). If enough sites did that, Google might change their policy.

Re: More than 1MM Facebook accounts exposed

#77
post #73

My name is Matt Jones, and I work on the Facbook security team that looked into this tonight. We only send these URLs to the email address of the account owner for their ease of use and never make them publicly available. Even then we put protection in place to reduce the likelihood that anyone else could click through to the account. For a search engine to come across these links, the content of the emails would nee…

The URLs don't need to be posted online. Some browsers (Chrome, possibly Firefox with Safe Browsing mode, very likely any browser with a Google Toolbar installed) send visited URLs to Google and they will be indexed. I don't know if this is officially documented by Google, but several people have reported seeing this while testing new/beta websites that weren't published or linked anywhere.

Re: More than 1MM Facebook accounts exposed

#78
post #73

My name is Matt Jones, and I work on the Facbook security team that looked into this tonight. We only send these URLs to the email address of the account owner for their ease of use and never make them publicly available. Even then we put protection in place to reduce the likelihood that anyone else could click through to the account. For a search engine to come across these links, the content of the emails would nee…

The URLs don't need to be posted online. Some browsers (Chrome, possibly Firefox with Safe Browsing mode, very likely any browser with a Google Toolbar installed) send visited URLs to Google and they will be indexed. I don't know if this is officially documented by Google, but several people have reported seeing this while testing new/beta websites that weren't published or linked anywhere.

Wouldn't a proper robots.txt rule fix this?

Re: More than 1MM Facebook accounts exposed

#79
post #73

My name is Matt Jones, and I work on the Facbook security team that looked into this tonight. We only send these URLs to the email address of the account owner for their ease of use and never make them publicly available. Even then we put protection in place to reduce the likelihood that anyone else could click through to the account. For a search engine to come across these links, the content of the emails would nee…

The URLs don't need to be posted online. Some browsers (Chrome, possibly Firefox with Safe Browsing mode, very likely any browser with a Google Toolbar installed) send visited URLs to Google and they will be indexed. I don't know if this is officially documented by Google, but several people have reported seeing this while testing new/beta websites that weren't published or linked anywhere.

I'm not sure either, but I doubt that Chrome or any of the badware-stopping features that are built in to it cause the URLs they're checking to be indexed. I'd be even more surprised if Firefox did this.

If you've got the toolbar installed though, I'd be less surprised if they tried crawling or indexing URLs you go to.

EDIT: It looks like they've explicitly said the toolbar does not cause things to appear in search results: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-toolbar-indexing-12894.ht....

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