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Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no excuse for not knowing the English language, first as a 21 century citizen and secondly as a web developer.

I can think of many. For example, you're unemployed, and live in a hostile environment (i.e. palestine). I however cannot think of an excuse for a support team who's native language is english to dismiss the possibility of a serious bug.

If you have bombs flying over your head I doubt you spend your day hacking Zuckerberg's account.

I concur with the second point.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you and am leaving this comment in hopes that those reading this thread don't get the impression that the entire HN community supports such a despicable outlook. I, for one, am grateful for all of the many important contributions to furthering computer science and its associated industries by non english speaking individuals.

Do you ever stop and think that maybe if people were less lazy and started learning English things would actually improve? Information (including "important contributions to furthering computer science") would spread more rapidly, people would have access to an endless stream of news outlets and have a more detailed view of the world. Also, there won't be any need to waste money on translators (do you know how much m…

you know that the biggest advances in Maths are made in japanese, russian and french, right? You know that english got a status of lingua franca only gradually, meaning that for a long time there was actually no reason whatsoever to learn it. And now the best one, you know that thanks to the US money sent to Israel, Palestine is voluntarily maintained a third world country by its neighbor who impairs any form of education (or other form of societal development whatsoever, like having a port, and airport, fishing, trading, traveling etc.) This guy learned some web stuff and some english (whose alphabet and spelling directions are different) while the most powerful nation in the world was sending obstacles (by which I mean missiles and bullets). I think he already did quite some homework.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

#53

Although this is blogspam, it's a blogspam that I can actually support... This is being covered a lot more widely because FB didn't just pay the guy. I know it wasn't about money for FB, but this is easily done a lot more damage then they would have expected and because of their inadequate handling of a single bug report, I can only feel satisfied as I think this will go down as a good case study of how not to be so…

Dismissive and ignored? Did you read what he submitted to them? It made no sense. He vaguely stated that there was a bug and his education. His bug report was nonsensical. I am not even slightly surprised they ignored it. And he violated the TOS before he even ever tried to post to Zuckerberg's wall.

To all hackers: If you speak perfect english, please proceed to submit exploits to the FB security team and collect $5k on your way out. If not, post to blackhat forums and receive $10k. Or use the exploit to manipulate FB stock price (I'm sure posting as Mark would move the stock price significantly, if only for a few minutes. But that's enough to earn a lot more than $5k).

Re: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

#54
post #41
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding, Sarah Godin is a fake FB account that he made to test his bug out.

Sarah Goodin is not a fake account, she is one of the first Facebook users (back when it was at Harvard only).

How do you know that the post to her wall wasn't his initial discovery of the bug? Any occurrence of the bug was a breach of the ToS.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you and am leaving this comment in hopes that those reading this thread don't get the impression that the entire HN community supports such a despicable outlook. I, for one, am grateful for all of the many important contributions to furthering computer science and its associated industries by non english speaking individuals.

Do you ever stop and think that maybe if people were less lazy and started learning English things would actually improve? Information (including "important contributions to furthering computer science") would spread more rapidly, people would have access to an endless stream of news outlets and have a more detailed view of the world. Also, there won't be any need to waste money on translators (do you know how much m…

english is my 2nd language and i am very fluent in it. But have YOU ever stopped to think that why should everyone strive to learn english, or be labeled "lazy" otherwise? Isn't it lazy of the english speaking community to expect everyone to speak in THEIR language rather than the other way around?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

#56
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is as cut and dry as that. The reply that 'this is not a bug' showed a lack of concern that the reporter may have been having difficulties correctly submitting information about what would be a very significant defect, if true. A community member taking the time and interest to try and go through proper channels to submit a vulnerability should, IMO, be given more respect than was shown by FB.

The problem here is that if FB took every single bug report that they got 100% seriously, they'd never get to the real bug reports, but would just constantly be sifting through the spam. You have to make educated guesses on whether or not a report is just useless spam. This report, the way it read, shoots off a lot of spam flags. I understand why he got dismissed so easily and frankly it is his fault. Nobody has enou…

At USENIX this year, Chris Evans gave a talk about how Google does their VRP. Specifically, he mentioned that there weren't many false positive reports at all, way fewer than he expected there would be. In general, most bugs have something to them. Google has a long history of following up on bug reports with little or nothing to go on, because they take their jobs seriously, and aren't antagonistic to community bug hunters. FB would do well to take a leaf out of their book.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you and am leaving this comment in hopes that those reading this thread don't get the impression that the entire HN community supports such a despicable outlook. I, for one, am grateful for all of the many important contributions to furthering computer science and its associated industries by non english speaking individuals.

Do you ever stop and think that maybe if people were less lazy and started learning English things would actually improve? Information (including "important contributions to furthering computer science") would spread more rapidly, people would have access to an endless stream of news outlets and have a more detailed view of the world. Also, there won't be any need to waste money on translators (do you know how much m…

Wow, what an ignorant comment. There are currently more Mandarin Chinese speaking engineers graduating than English speaking ones and more people worldwide that speak the language as well (both native speakers and overall), yet I don't see everyone in America clamoring to learn Chinese. Of course the world would be more efficient if translation was not necessary, but demanding everyone stop being so "lazy" and learn English is a presumptuous jingoistic fantasy.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever stop and think that maybe if people were less lazy and started learning English things would actually improve? Information (including "important contributions to furthering computer science") would spread more rapidly, people would have access to an endless stream of news outlets and have a more detailed view of the world. Also, there won't be any need to waste money on translators (do you know how much m…

english is my 2nd language and i am very fluent in it. But have YOU ever stopped to think that why should everyone strive to learn english, or be labeled "lazy" otherwise? Isn't it lazy of the english speaking community to expect everyone to speak in THEIR language rather than the other way around?

It's the dominant language (yeah most people speak Chinese because there's so many of them but English is spoken by people of all ethnicities) so it's obvious that non English speakers should put in the effort and not the other way around. The most influential textbooks, novels, papers are written in English: ignoring them because learning a language is hard it's pure laziness.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer

#60

Why don't people just send things in their native language? If the platform for communication is serious (like a place to report security vulnerabilities), I would imagine they would spend the time/money to get a real translation if one was needed. Even Google Translate probably could've done a better job than this guy's original report.

There's no excuse for not knowing the English language, first as a 21 century citizen and secondly as a web developer.

There’s no excuse for not knowing at least three out of English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Urdu, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian and German. If you’ve finished university peeking at a fourth and fifth language can’t hurt either.

How many do you know?

Edit: Oh, and how about a bit of Latin and Greek, maybe?

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