Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Master Password Was "Chuck Norris"
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris.' Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."
doesn't need a password.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
A privatized social networking site does not actually give you any privacy. Surprise!!!
Chuck Norris is unhackable thats the perfect password.
It's not Facebook's fault: it's not like they actually set the master password to "Chuck Norris".
The real WTF is that "Chuck Norris" works as a password into anything: Facebook, your online bank account, your sister's pants...
Like you need another reason?
Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database
Considering nearly everything you ever do on Facebook is made public to either your friends or everybody - thats not shocking at all. The entire system is basically built around informing everybody of everything you do. You can't even perform an action without some app or another prompting you "Do you want to post this on your profile? YES/NO".
And for those of you wondering, it's obvious what the new password is;
The only man to have ever beaten Chuck Norris? Bruce Lee.
There's funny, and then there's irresponsible. Having "Chuck Norris" as a master password that grants access to any account is most definitely the latter. I would expect that from a couple of teenagers running their first web server, not one of the most popular websites on the Internet.
There is a time and a place for silly HTML comments or in-joke variable names, but a master password for a site with hundreds of millions of users is not one of them.
Alright lets hear the chuck Norris Jokes! I wanna see some good ones
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
It just so happens that every computer system everywhere on the planet at all times can be rooted with the Chuck Norris password, given its infinite power.
Rumpus: When you say “click on somebody’s profile,” you mean you save our viewing history?
Employee: That’s right. How do you think we know who your best friends are? But that’s public knowledge; we’ve explicitly stated that we record that. If you look in your type-ahead search, and you press “A,” or just one letter, a list of your best friends shows up. It’s no longer organized alphabetically, but by the person you interact with most, your “best friends,” or at least those whom we have concluded you are best friends with.
This is rubbish, isn't it?
I've just typed "a" into the search box and it comes up with an alphabetical list of contacts. The first one happens to be someone whos profile I don't think I've ever clicked on.
Well ... I found my new password.
...can actually type ******** into any system and login successfully.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
I wonder, what it is now... "Angelina Jolie"? "Bruce Willis"?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
At least the master password wasn't something weak like "Rick Moranis." By using Chuck Norris, you can tell Facebook was taking security seriously.
or else!
in fact, a little known subplot in the whole drama last week over china hacking into google email servers is that chinese intel knew the master password for gmail was "chuck norris"
problem was, when the chinese spies typed chuck norris into the human rights activists' email logins, the password itself would jump off the computer screen, hit the spy with five roundhouse kicks to the face, then smash their keyboard into dust just by giving it a hard stare
so the chinese government had no other choice but to hire hackers to break into the accounts. because even when they hired seven of the greatest kung fu masters and the most proficient in the eighteen arms of wushu in all of china to stand by while the spy logged in, plus jet li, plus jackie chan, and plus the reanimated cyborg admantium zombie of bruce lee, the chuck norris password still roundhouse kicked all of them into submission
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... Not
Privacy Invader FAIL
And based on earlier developments of today (Analysis of 32 Million Breached Passwords), it has just been changed to 123456 or zuc123456 because we know that no one would try it now...
are you the Gatekeeper?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's a shame the summary doesn't somehow provide you with access to more detailed information on the topic, like an article or something. If it did, you could read that and find out that there is no longer a master password (or at least, so they claim), as they've replaced that concept with a newer admin tool.
However, I disagree; in the context of FB, the idea of a master password is not scary.
Read the article. They replaced it with a system where developers click a widget and fill in the justification for the access.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
something lame like "root".
Best Slashdot Co
No, this is what happened. Chuck Norris logged into Facebook once to check it out (without having to register, of course) and when he logged out, the master password automatically set itself to his name, so that every time someone would log in using the master password, Chuck would find out about it right away, he immediately knows when someone types, writes, pronounces or even thinks his name. I should warn you to watch what you type, write, say or think, because he is omnipresent! I have mentioned His name too many times in vain here, so this is probably my last pNO CARRIER
I wonder, what it is now... "Angelina Jolie"? "Bruce Willis"?
Obama
I’m not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out ‘Chuck Norris,’ more or less.
Sounds like it was obscure enough to me. If a user just happened to be using that password they would have never known it was magic unless they thought to try it on another user id.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
A friend of mine was at a party. She wasn't drinking but others were. Anyway, it was a long table and she was in the middle. When the waitress came by, she was passing shots down to the others. At one point she had two shots in her hand. Of course, that's when someone took a photo of the group and TADA! My friend is now on another friend's Facebook page with two shots in her hand.
She's worried that a potential employer will see that and think she's some sort of party animal and is trying to get her friend to take it off of their Facebook page. She's already getting some ribbing from folks who've seen the picture.
doesn't sleep.... he stalks your facebook photos
Jason-Palmer.com
They tried to change it, but once a password's been set to Chuck Norris, password changes just get fucked up.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Nearly everything you've ever done on [insert any social network] is recorded into a database!
--
Good symmetry here... use the name of a douchebag as your password to do douchebag things.
The real WTF is that "Chuck Norris" works as a password into anything: Facebook, your online bank account, your sister's pants...
But it only works for Chuck Norris.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
No, they chose a really obscure washed-up has-been actor whos career has been in the gutter for quite some time: WInona Ryder, I just tried it, still works!
I thought it was Bruce Lee no spacings.
Come on, it's not Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is dead. The new password MUST be Jack Bauer.
Close but no cigar.
"Jack Bauer" might work for physical access. But for password access to databases and encrypted files it's "Chloe O'Brian".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
J03 pisC0p0
Like anyone's ever going to admit to using *that* as a password.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I wonder, what it is now... "Angelina Jolie"? "Bruce Willis"?
Obama
|3@rry $0ter0
... Paris Hilton. So anyone can get in.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's the same password I have on my luggage!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I wonder, what it is now... "Angelina Jolie"? "Bruce Willis"?
Obama
No, they had to change it.
[signature]
Norris was defeated in his first two tournaments, dropping decisions to Joe Lewis and Allen Steen and three matches at the International Karate Championships to Tony Tulleners. By 1967 Norris had improved enough that he scored victories over the likes of Lewis, Skipper Mullins, Arnold Urquidez, Victor Moore, Ron Marchini, and Steve Sanders. In early 1968, Norris suffered the tenth and last loss of his career, losing an upset decision to Louis Delgado.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris
It's obvious that the master password is Aryan.
Wow, I just figured out a new feature on Slashdot! You can type in, "U:username and P:password," and it will replace your password with stars.
Example:
U:JetreL
P:*******
See! That to cool what will they think of next!
If it isn't broke, tinker with it till it is!
Unlike slashdot, which writes everything in code on paper and has mute gnomes who it in a locked vault.
Seriously, I expect this kind of idiocy from the AP, but I thought slashdot editors were supposed to be technical. Nearly every goddamn site stores user data in a database, and in nearly all these cases there are employees with the master passwords that allow them to see every damn thing. (Except, if you're lucky, the password.)
The cake is a pie
Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it.
I've worked for a call centre under a few contracts. That's pretty much the standard everywhere. First thing we were told before getting access to the CS tools was that yes, you could access pretty much anyone's account info you wanted, and that if you did so for any reason other than it being necessary for your work you would be fired on the spot. Only information such as passwords, credit card numbers and bank account numbers was not readily available. On one contract, we could log into anyone's account on the website and take any actions with it the user could (and then some), though this was done very rarely.
Honestly, it doesn't stress me out all that much; I put nothing on Facebook that I wouldn't want getting into others' hands. I expect that the things I set to "friends only" won't be available to the average Joe who happens by my profile, but at the same time it doesn't surprise or annoy me that Facebook employees can see it. Of course they can.
Employee: See, the thing is — and I don’t know how much you know about it — it’s all stored in a database on the backend. Literally everything. Your messages are stored in a database, whether deleted or not. So we can just query the database, and easily look at it without every logging into your account. That’s what most people don’t understand..
Is this a cover of "Duh" magazine??? This holds true for just about every content / banking / email / ....ANY website ever created!! Does this guy know how websites work??? Did his uncle get him a job there???
...*ghasp*.... database!
Indeed, this very message...its now been persisted to a
Chuck Norris! Chuck Norris! ITS NOT WORKING!!!
I don't think there's any question that Stanford is the number one CS department in the world.
Wow, there's so much question, it's ridiculous. According to US News and World Reports 2008 (the most recent I could find), it was tied with Berkeley and MIT for #1, and even that is being generous. For a while, it was Carnegie and MIT alternating between 1 and 2 every year. Perhaps she meant "the best entrepreneurial CS program".
it's now "Walker Texas Ranger".
True Chuck Moore facts:
Chuck Moore wrote his own VLSI chip design system. In Forth.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Fuckin Chuck Norris...
In the beginning, there was null.
He may have been a good textbook fighter, but he lacked style, and lacked speed. Today, he lacks youth. He's an OLD OLD man.
I'm not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out 'Chuck Norris,' more or less.
Lemme guess:
(|-|U(| |\|0RR15
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
The forementioned master password seems to work only on my account...
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
Tom is my friend.
I just say, 'Custodian, show me every single facebook password.'
See subject and please: Learn to write more than 2 words to make your points. Your "see dick and jane run" prose absolutely sucks.
It's pretty normal for support personnel to have access to production systems in order to provide support.
On Facebook? What support?
Please help metamoderate.
ever in the world
This statement just released by a facebook representative:"It is sad that facebook has learned that their master password is in the wild , So we have elected to institute a new master password which will be 'roundhouse' this password will be guarded with all the technology we have available!"
FragHARD or don't frag at all
Chuck Norris is the perfect password it is impossible to hack or brute force; but it can also beat the crap out of any other password out there; he is the Irresistible Force and the Immovable Object.
Bruce Lee didn't defeat Chuck Norris.
It's obvious that Sun Tzu teaches about deception, and Chuck Norris knew that a feigned loss and a delayed-kill is the only way to win one over Bruce Lee the Dragon of HonkyKong
GP (modded 5 insightful) says there is no problem, just abstain from facebook and you'll be fine. Then the parent story shows that friends or others will upload photos of you, tag and discuss those photos whether or not you allow them to. Now you are in facebook's databases _forever_ even if you abstained from getting an account.
They do have Donald Knuth, so that's saying something.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Bruce Campbell
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Administrators of websites can access your accounts. Oh my word!
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
I thought about this after reading it last night. I'm pretty sure it's fake. What the guy says about PHP sounds a bit like someone who knows nothing about coding at all commenting on it yet trying to sound like they do.
I think it sounds a bit too casual and there's too much swearing for someone who is already risking his job by talking. Making it appear as if a company is full of immature jerks (however true it is) won't go down well with your employer.
br/
Everyone knows that Chuck does not need a surname.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I don't see the problem here.
Q: What is the strongest pasword in the world?
A: "Chuck Norris"
I lost my sig.
There is no privacy. In a great many cases every URL you visit is recorded by your ISP and sold to third party companies that mine it and create spurious interpretations of it to sell their front end to marketing departments. This is nothing different. Every site records activity. It's just the personal nature of the activity that makes the idea of Facebook doing it so discomforting.
What does Chuck has more that we don't have ?
Don't tell me "Karma" because I'm having plenty of that left.. It must be something else! Something biometric ..
oh probably Chuck Norris doesn't need biometrics to enter something ..
I'm sleeptyping again!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
will cause nearby monsters to flee.
> I wonder, what it is now... "Angelina Jolie"? "Bruce Willis"?
Actually, it's Tokugawa Mujahibamidad Prolszinoczewski Cohen now. They wanted to be more culturally inclusive.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.