Facebook privacy glitch leaks Zuckerberg's personal photos

by Steven Mostyn - Dec 7 2011, 03:02

A gaping hole uncovered in Facebook’s privacy system has allowed users to access personal photos belonging to other people without requiring them to be approved ‘friends’ on the social network.

The hole in question—which was discovered by online forum users—was connected to the network’s ‘Report abuse’ feature and provided users with a selection of private photos to view for questionable content whenever a single profile snap was flagged as inappropriate.

In order to bring the problem to light, the process was exploited via the user account of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, which resulted in a number of his private and personal photos being passed around the Internet.   

Unsurprisingly, Facebook software engineers have been quick to sow up the privacy hole and, in so doing, wipe any residual egg off Zuckerberg’s face.

“The bug was a result of one of our most recent code pushes and was live for a limited period of time,” the network outlined in an official statement.

“Not all content was accessible, rather a small number of one’s photos,” it added. “Upon discovering the bug, we immediately disabled the system, and will only return functionality once we can confirm the bug has been fixed.”

Some of the photos leaked to the Net have even been posted by news outlets—such as the BBC—since Facebook has said it won’t be seeking copyright infringement claims as the imagery is now in the public domain.

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