When Palestinian cyber-security expert Khalil Shreateh was brushed off by Facebook after reporting a bug, he decided to show them rather than tell them about it.
Shreateh hacked into the Facebook page of founder Mark Zuckerberg and wrote, "I had no other choice…after all the reports I sent to Facebook team."
Facebook took notice within minutes and contacted the hacker, while taking down the post.
The company reportedly fixed the bug, but refused to give Shreateh the $500 awarded to those who find glitches — largely on a technicality.
Facebook security team member Matt Jones explained on the website Hacker News why the Palestinian wasn't eligible for the money:
"In order to qualify for a payout you must 'make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations' and 'use a test account instead of a real account when investigating bugs.'"
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The native Arabic speaker had warned Facebook's security team earlier, writing: “My name is Khalil Shreateh. I finished school with B.A degree in Information Systems . I would like to report a bug in your main site (www.facebook.com) which i discovered it…The bug allow Facebook users to share links to other facebook users, I tested it on Sarah.Goodin wall and I got success post.”
Jones did say that Shreateh would be rewarded next time if he followed the bug reporting guidelines.