Last night, Zuckerberg’s fan page on the website was attacked by hackers, who took over his page and posted the following message, pretending to be him: “Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way?
Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011.” Shortly after the message was published, it was ‘liked’ more than 2000 times and had attracted nearly 400 comments. “Facebook users – famous or not – need to take better care of their social networking security,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at internet security firm Sophos.
“Mark Zuckerberg might be wanting to take a close look at his privacy and security settings after this embarrassing breach. It’s not clear if he was careless with his password, was phished, or sat down in a Starbucks and got sidejacked while using an unencrypted wireless network, but however it happened, it’s left egg on his face just when Facebook wants to reassure users that it takes security and privacy seriously.
Maybe MrZuckerberg would be wise to get a refresher on computer security best practice. Facebook has since removed Zuckerberg’s fan page from the site and have refused to comment on the security breach.