When Khalil Shreateh, a Palestinian hacker, was denied a bounty for identifying a Facebook security flaw, a crowdfunding campaign was started to raise money to reward him. In just one week, the account raised 26 times the minimum amount of $500 the social network grants to those who report ‘qualifying security bugs’ under its White Hat disclosure program.
Shreateh, a 30-year-old unemployed security researcher with a degree in information systems, found a loophole in Facebook’s system that allows anyone to circumvent security and post on strangers’ timelines. To demonstrate the bug to the Facebook security team, he posted on the timeline of a friend of the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg.
However, as a series of e-mails posted on Sheateh’s blog reveals, his report was ignored, prompting the hacker to post on Zuckerberg’s timeline. In light of this violation of Facebook’s terms of service, the security team fixed the major bug and denied Shreateh a reward for his find.
Security researcher, Marc Maiffret, launched an online fundraising campaign to reward the Palestinian hacker for the effort he made that is “for the good of everyone”. With $3,000 raised beyond the $10,000 goal, the campaign is an apparent success and a nod to the talent and virtuousness of the unemployed programmer who works on a five-year-old laptop with broken keys and a broken battery in Yatta-Hebron, Palestine.
For more info – http://www.gofundme.com/3znhjs
2 comments
Good day! Would you mind if I share your blog with my facebook group?
There’s a lot of people that I think would really enjoy your content.
Please let me know. Thanks
Yes please do.