Last week, Palestinian security expert Khalil Shreateh tried to alert Facebook's security team to a hole in the social network's privacy settings, only to be met with tech support crickets. So Shreateh decided to get their attention by hacking into CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook wall and posting "sorry for breaking your privacy."
Facebook temporarily placed Shreateh into Facebook jail with a suspended account while they sorted out the bug he discovered, which allowed anyone to post on anyone else's wall even if the two users aren't friends. Shreateh reported the bug hoping to pick a monetary prize from a Facebook initiative that offers rewards in exchange for safely reporting security holes in the social network. However, Shreateh apparently broke the rules of the program when he demonstrated the exploit to Facebook's security team using an innocent victim's account rather than one the dummy accounts Facebook has set up for hacker target practice. When he demonstrated the bug a second time using Zuckerberg's wall, that's when he incurred the wrath of Facebook security.
As a Facebook integrity team member explained on Hacker News that bug reports are often hindered by a language barrier, but Shreateh later sent in a video of the exploit that cleared up any confusion about the bug, but didn't lead to a payday for the budding security expert. Still, according to Shreateh's own Facebook wall, the stunt landed him on the front pages of websites everywhere and even an interview with CNN. He has reportedly received a multiple job offers for posting a simple status update on Zuckerberg's wall.
