Slashdot Mirror
100 Million Facebook Pages Leaked On Torrent Site
Stoobalou writes "A directory containing personal details about more than 100 million Facebook users has surfaced on an Internet file-sharing site. The 2.8GB torrent was compiled by hacker Ron Bowes of Skull Security, who created a web crawler program that harvested data on users contained in Facebook's open access directory, which lists all users who haven't bothered to change their privacy settings to make their pages unavailable to search engines."
Misleading headline is misleading. These public profiles haven't been leaked. They've simply been aggregated.
This guy wrote a script to crawl Facebook and download everything he could. So? Nothing is revealed here that we couldn't find manually ourselves by just looking at a person of interest's profile.
This story is about a glorified crawler. No actual hacking transpired. No personal information that wasn't already revealed has been revealed. This is not news. In fact, I had to go back to TFS and double-check that kdawson wasn't the editor - that's how terrible this story really is.
Would someone create a list that only contains public profiles with NSFW images?
Thanx
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
In this case I think it is a more of a matter of 'yeah so?'. I put my information on that website *SO* I could be found. Everyone else who links to me is doing the *EXACT SAME THING*. The whole point of this site as sold is to link you to your friends and family. Thats it. How do you find people? Oh yeah you search for them.
The usual internet problems exist. Do not put up there what you do not want other to know.
I am sure there are dozens of ways to abuse the information that is up there. But guess what *YOU HAVE DECIDED* to put it up there...
That you expect some sort of privacy from an application that by its nature is about being open and sharing whatever stupid thing you are doing is backwards.
If you do not want to be found facebook is not the place to be. It shares everything no matter what your 'settings' are. You have by its nature shared with at least 2 parties. Your friends and facebook. If you want to keep a secret you do not tell people who are known to tell others.
and get more information from those people. You stay classy slashdot.
Rest assured that the blackhats who want this information already know about it. As another user suggested, one potential abuse of this information would be to choose targets for social engineering attacks. But those who would exploit it did not just now hear about it. If anything it's the public that is often left behind.
If you don't want to see that reality then we cannot have a conversation about this. If you can see that reality, then I have one question for you: how do you propose we solve the bigger problem of raising awareness of the dangers and misuses of such databases without some publicity? The users who least understand how these things can be abused are generally the ones who are most actively making their personal information publically available. Everyone else either doesn't share the need for personal exhibition, uses false data, or takes a deliberate and calculated risk with any real data made available.
While I think it's an empty vanity personally, I'm not against someone making a public exhibit of themselves if that's what they wish to do. What I would like to see, however, is for those people to do this with a full awareness of how it could be used against them. The deck is somewhat stacked against them because the black hats thoroughly study how to misuse information, whereas the average user just wants to communicate with friends. That can change, and it really should.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I'll bet there are about 100 million people who would like to test the security of Ron Bowes' nuts against a swift kick. I mean, he should be aware of the Extreme Pain vulnerability by now, and he should have taken the most basic security precautions by now, like wearing a cup. If not, well, he deserves what he gets, right?
+5 Insightful? Why is it that we regard Tavis Ormandy as someone trying to expose the insecurity of Microsoft when he releases a how-to exploit Windows hack but when a security researcher attempts to reveal how insecure Facebook's "Directory" service can be we attack him as the creator of that service and not Facebook?
I believe your anger would be better directed at Facebook. After all, this is posted in his blog for the world to see while a malware author could have just taken this list and run ncrack on it without anyone knowing.
I would also like to point out that, as mentioned many times in this thread, this is just a list. Not even real names but just usernames of people on Facebook. That means that if you find your username on this list, you can restrict your settings so that no one can see your public profile. Then if someone uses this URL list to look you up they get nothing.
So a security researcher tries to wake up Facebook users and he's the guy you want to kick in the nuts? Very curious.
My work here is dung.