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Facebook Founder Accused of Hacking Into Rivals' Email
An anonymous reader notes a long piece up at BusinessInsider.com accusing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of hacking into the email accounts of rivals and journalists. The CEO of the world's most successful social networking website was accused of at least two breaches of privacy. In a two-year investigation detailing the founding of Facebook, Nicholas Carlson, a senior editor at Silicon Alley Insider, uncovered what he claimed was evidence of the hackings in 2004. "New information uncovered by Silicon Alley Insider suggests that some of the complaints [in a court case ongong since 2007] against Mark Zuckerberg are valid. It also suggests that, on at least one occasion in 2004, Mark used private login data taken from Facebook's servers to break into Facebook members' private email accounts and read their emails — at best, a gross misuse of private information. Lastly, it suggests that Mark hacked into the competing company's systems and changed some user information with the aim of making the site less useful. ... Over the past two years, we have interviewed more than a dozen sources familiar with aspects of this story — including people involved in the founding year of the company. We have also reviewed what we believe to be some relevant IMs and emails from the period. Much of this information has never before been made public. None of it has been confirmed or authenticated by Mark or the company." The single-page view doesn't have its own URL; click on "View as one page" near the bottom.
Lawyers throughout the US just had orgasms....
Facebook Founder Accused of Hacking Into Rivals' Email, Bitches.
poke
Oh yeah: "Timber!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
just wow.
So will he get a mug shot now?
This is a serious allegation. With all of the information Facebook aggregates, they potentially could unlock many people's emails and various other accounts with the family and personal information. Lots of people use simple things like their pets or parents birthdays as those reminder question answers, and Facebook could easily hold all the correct information to gain access to those accounts. If this case is proven true, I can see some new laws on how companies with this kind of information have to structure and protect it. Hopefully people will wake up and stop putting their personal information where Facebook and others can see...
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
He probably can write a book about what he's gonna face now.
This is why I use a different password on facebook than anywhere else.
Actually it was when my account started spamming wall postings with links to Chinese drug sites I changed my password to something unique, but still, virtually the same thing.
using the same password for their email account as they do with their social networking sites then people should expect to be compromised.
... as this limits the guess work.
I suggest you use 4 types of passwords, one for accounts that wouldnt effect u much, one for email, one for social sites and IM, and one for bank accounts; with none of the passwords having anything to do with each other, e.g redball, orangeball,greenball... or whiteball, soccer, redflag
this "hack" was probably just stupid curiosity which will probably get him arrested, and once that happens he will loose a lot of control of the company.
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
When you look at Facebook's dismal history of privacy policies and changes, it's really not that surprising. A person with flawed ethical standards tends to do unethical things.
Kinda puts his comments that "No one has any reasonable expectation of privacy anymore" into a whole new light, doesn't it?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Did he offer to buy the Caprica Bucs as well?
A friend once made the observation that no big-time, fast-track success story in the world of IT ever makes it without doing something that gets them into serious hot water at least once. Once they do that, they offer a bunch of mea culpas, make a few donations here and there, then make bank. (The slow-track success stories don't usually fit that theory.)
This is a bit different, seeing as he's already made bank, and it's a skeleton coming out of the closet, but I still think he'll get off easy.
Remember, it's not how much justice you can get, it's how much you can afford.
[End Of Line]
No wonder.
Dear
Mail Online has a better article, because the third pic in the article is of a hottie using a laptop to browse Facebook:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1255888/Facebook-founder-Mark-Zuckerberg-hacked-emails-rivals-journalists.html
Of course, she's even prettier naked:
http://www.crestock.com/image/2137917-diamond.aspx
He isn't exactly known to believe in privacy in the first place, after all:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy
The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Talking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25-year-old chief executive of the world's most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a "social norm".
Was Chuck Norris
The hilarity would be if his tracks could be traced down through their own system's perverse logging, maybe then would he regret his company's policy of practically 100% data retention. Pwned Mark Fuckerberg. Pwned.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Sad if true. Although Silicon Valley Insider is one of the least reputable blogs on the net.
In related news, something about hacking some email accounts as well.
I'm a black-hat hacker...bitch.
gotta love the rogue admin
The issue is my ASS: Availability, Safety, Security.
I want my apps and data to be accessible at all times. Even when I'm off-line, or they are, or somethings dies in-between.
I want my data to be safe, which means off-site, off-line backups.
I want my data to be secure, which means no hacking. For every high-visibility CEO that gets caught, how many 3rd-world subcontractors' trainees don't ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Expect a lot more of these stuff.
The people who start social networks are a different breed than those that cooked up tech startups of past decades.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
And this is why don't provide any site any more information that the bare minimum that it needs.
Nah. Facebook is a scam.
Now excuse me, I've got to update my status.
i wouldn't entrust my passwords to a third party website, but if i had to do it, i guess i would have to change my password temporary, let the third party site access my account with the temporary password, and then change it back. but i've always felt very awkward that facebook is one website. Is it possible to make a distributed/cloud version of it using some form of client-side decryption, so that nobody "owns" any of the information in its entirety?
ANYONE who's silly enough to use a primary e-mail address where anything important lands for any social networking site is a fool. Hotmail, gMail, et al exist for a reason....If Suckerberg wants to read my Hotmail that's linked to my Facebook account, feel free. It's all facebook related trash anyway....since it's one of my many throwaway mail accounts, used for such activities.
...to avoid using Facebook.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Since when copy/paste a password is considered hacking?
There are certain online stock broker, who use the same technique. In order to make a deposit directly with a bank account, this service needs to verify that you are the true owner of the bank account. This can be done by entering your bank account online user name and password. You only have to do this once however. So I change to a temporary one, confirm the bank account with the broker, and change it back.
New Economic Perspectives
Web 2.0 has proven itself nothing more than a private takeover of the public infrastructure of the net. FB wants to displace everything from email to irc. If people want to commit their information to sharks who want to mnetize their personal information, they get what they deserve.
Anyone familiar with the mechanics of Facebook's rise to prominence should not be surprised at the alleged ethical and legal violations. Zuckerberg et al. hacked and social engineered their way into dozens of college freshman admit lists so they could be the first to get new students online. This is not speculation. The "virality" of early facebook was not viral at all, it was good old fashioned spam to ill-gotten mailing lists.
The problem with what has been alleged is that it now gives more ammunition to those against SaaS over the web. On the other hand, it makes it all the more important that these companies be forced to use SSL for login sessions.
On a side note, this sounds way too stupid to have actually occurred. If Mark actually did these things, I feel much more confident in my own intelligence (in comparison to his own, and what I previously thought of it).
Huh? [devShell.org]
It took me about 10 minutes to skim through the backstory, but it's pretty sparse on the details and supporting evidence.
"Instead, he decided to access the email accounts of Crimson editors and review their emails. How did he do this? Here's how Mark described his hack to a friend:"
Oh, a friend said Mark said... right.
"Nevertheless, during 2004, Mark Zuckerberg still appeared to be obsessed with ConnectU. Specifically, he appears to have hacked into ConnectU's site and made changes to multiple user profiles, including Cameron Winklevoss's."
"At one point, Mark appears to have exploited a flaw in ConnectU's account verification process to create a fake Cameron Winklevoss account with a fake Harvard.edu email address."
It "appeared" that way? According to whom, and based on what?
Seriously, the whole article is a long string of "it looks like" and "he said she said Mark said" with nothing to back any of it up.
This doesn't surprise me, only confirms what I've thought about Zuckerberg.
1) I believe he stole Facebook from the ConnectU founders. I believe the assertions that he was hired as a developer and dragged his feet while forming his own company which eventually became Facebook.
2) I believe he has no scruples when it comes to Facebook users' data. He has publicly stated that he knows what's best for "his" users and this arrogance shines through every time the UI is abruptly changed.
3) I believe he will do whatever he pleases with users' information. I don't think that privacy laws provide guidance to him but instead are constraints that he will bypass given any opportunity.
I'm pleased to see that he is being publicly exposed - I doubt anything will come of it - but am glad for him to be seen as he truly is, an arrogant and unscrupulous bad person. This latest revelation may finally send him where he belongs . . .
banking.
They can't just do it the way, say, PayPal, does it and make a very small debit (or deposit) with a unique authentication key in the memo line? I've done this with a couple of different companies, and I really can't imagine doing it the way you describe, it just seems silly. Just accounting for all the different ways a bank could do an HTML login process (mine will ask you a series of personal questions if you haven't authenticated with the same computer recently and told it to remember the computer) would be a nightmare.
Granted, they way PayPal now does the above process reeks of dung, as they process a small debit with the key and when you authenticate they credit that amount to your PayPal account instead of sending it back to your bank, but that's just an implementation detail.
Script Kidd if you use other peoples programs to steal password .Hacker if You do it by yourself.
Denta Smile Md
Elwood: Illinois Nazis.
Jake: I hate Illinois Nazis.
Not to be an ass but I have to play devil's advocate here. How in the hell are we supposed to take what they say at face value? Supposing it really did happen, where's the evidence that proves they didn't make these dumbass mistakes on their own?
Or, as the HarvardConnection founders have alleged, was he stalling the development of HarvardConnection so that he could build a competing site and launch it first? Our investigation suggests the latter.
It also suggests that he had developed a strategy for dealing with his would-be competition: Delay developing it.
Next, Mark appears to have logged into the accounts of some ConnectU users and changed their privacy settings to invisible. The idea here was apparently to make it harder for people to find friends on ConnectU, thus reducing its utility. Eventually, Mark appears to have gone a step further, deactivating about 20 ConnectU accounts entirely.
And you thought Microsoft was the bad evil monopolist. Sure, it is all in the past now, but it was worse, I think.
Could this be turned into an anti-trust case?
Regarding your sig, it's because your sig says you're one of those devices that injects soap and water into a woman's nether regions. I'm sure you said some sort of asinine thing and some intelligent person at /. modded you as such.
who still uses that shit? what a waste of time!
He won. He's rich as hell now and can buy his way out of any trouble people try and make for him, and he's sitting on top of one of the modern era's most powerful web empires.
It's business, baby. The ends justify the means.
Actually they do have the "micro-deposit" technique as a way to confirm your bank account, but it takes like 3 business days. The method I described works instantly, and only works with a handful of "big" banks.
New Economic Perspectives
Jake: Hey what's going on?
Police: Uh the bums won their court case so they are marching today.
Jake: What bums?
Police: The fucking Nazi Party.
Elwood: Illinois Nazis.
Jake: I hate Illinois Nazis.
VROOM!
New Economic Perspectives
Yeah, well you're a douchebag. I've suffered a lot more at the hands of douchebags.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
but I took gym instead of Talmud studies in highschool.
By hurling trite epithets about you are not really refuting any of his claims.
The heads of Google take their job seriously. Zuckerberg is just a douchebag who was at the right place at the right time.
At least he wasn't having sex.
He's not wrong.
But, fortunately, there are ways of dealing with that.
I consider him untouchable.He owns a billion-worthy company which has serious investors (Microsoft?).His company is on the news every now and then.I can't imagine that he could easily be affected by law , for such things at least.
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-hacked-into-the-harvard-crimson-2010-3
For the love of christ, this site should know better.
Facebook is not about Mr. Zuckerberg.
If you want to know the real deal...
http://albumoftheday.com/facebook/
If he forgot to donate to the Obama 2008 campaign, then this dude could be looking at some very serious jail time.
...did anyone think it was a good idea to give Facebook your webmail password, as they are constantly pestering you to do? "We won't store your password." Yeah right.
I'm wondering who is so fucking stupid as to put a non-clickable link in their post. Learn to HTML, retard.
specially those that take pride on it.
Dear
I am absolutely shocked that someone would impersonate another human being for personal gain. What has the world come to?
Well, nicely done to avoid them having your password... ...except that e-mails transits in clear and have as much security as post-card.
If it's not Mark Zuckerberg reading your mail while pretending to "help you search for your friends", any node which relayed your mails between the author's machine and your screen could have done the same.
The only way to have really secure e-mail, is to use end-to-end encryption. Using mail client which support PGP or GPG (like Thunderbird). Encrypt the mail in the author's client, decrypt it in the recipient's.
Anything else short of that are just post-card. They might be slightly obfuscated (2 nodes could communicate using TLS, you could be accessing webmail over HTTPS), but that still leaves clear copies in the nodes or in the inbox.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
you work for Goldman Sachs?
Nothing too suprising in the article. Mark Zuckerberg just came off as a guy who would screw over his own grandmother if it got him ahead. From what I've read those are qualities needed in the boardrooms of america. To have any kind of scruples at that level requires some serious business talent, if anything just to keep you from being screwed over by all the other asses.
Facebook has time and time again shown that it will push all boundries it can to gain users and gain assets from those users. Mr. Zuckerberg was just too young when founding facebook to realize that he needed to be a bit more subtle when talking to others as it could come back to bit him on the ass.
This is precisely why I'm moving back to hosting my own website on my own server and hosting my own email. Facebook has always made me a bit wary, and while I'm cool with Goog - their ads are just a little TOO targeted as of late.
Eventually, some wise lawyer will realize that ignorance of the law _is_ an excuse.
Proof: have the judge read into the record every law, covenant, and government regulation that may apply (you don't know until you read it do you?) to a citizen at a specific location in America. Even reading 24 hours a day, I suspect you could not finish in a reasonable amount of time (read all the new laws in that have been passed since you started). Some folks think it would take years. I think given the state of jurisprudence in America, the process would never end.
Q.E.D.
(qed even if it takes more than a year at 24/7 because that places an unreasonable burden on the average citizen).
He is just following the successful business practices of Microsoft and Norton. All he needs is good on house lawyers and capital to buy up or off those litigations that may be headed unfavorable endings.