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Bug Social Networks Spam IT

Facebook Glitch Let Spammer Post To Walls 63

Posted by samzenpus from the bigger-longer-lasting-status-updates dept.
angry tapir writes "A clever spammer found a glitch in Facebook's photo upload system and used it to post thousands of unwanted Wall messages last week. Facebook confirmed the bug Friday, after notifying affected users of the issue. Most of the messages promised 'Free iPhones,' a common spam message on Facebook these days. Facebook says that the spammer hit thousands of profiles before the company removed the spammy photos and notified affected users. No accounts were compromised as a result of the bug."
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Facebook Glitch Let Spammer Post To Walls More

Facebook Glitch Let Spammer Post To Walls

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  • Facebook is cancer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 06, 2010 @07:05AM (#33487660)

    Facebook is cancer on the internet that is eating away creativity and innovation.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ciderbrew ( 1860166 )
      I think you'll find the people hacking facebook are very innovative and creative. TV is the main mind killer.

      • I think you'll find the people hacking facebook are very innovative and creative 15 year-olds.

        Facebook is the new AOL.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by anguirus.x ( 1463871 )

        I think you'll find the people hacking facebook are very innovative and creative. TV is the main mind killer.

        Actually, fear is the main mind killer. Such as fear of TV killing your mind....

        • I thought that as I typed mind killer :) Have a knowing nod +1

        • Actually, Zorgath Brain-Melter of Argyle III is the true main mind killer. He has over 18 billion confirmed kills. Fyr Lobotimizer (you mis-spelled his first name) of Satiria VII was relegated to secondary killer after the Mice-and-Figs debacle of '05. The more you know... :-)
           
          ...the more likely you are to be targeted by Zorgath.

      • I have a computing habit about equal to that of some couch potatoes, and that's one thing I do point out: at least the computer is/can be active instead of passive, at least more often than the TV is active-thinking
        For instance, I tend to like strategy games.

      • As I said in my biopic "Dune", fear is the mind-killer.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by Dhalka226 ( 559740 )

      Yes, because most of the people on Facebook would be off composing symphonies or expanding human knowledge if they just spent less time posting on peoples' walls.

      I'm getting ridiculously tired of this hyperbolic Slashdot crap toward anything some random whackjob who can't even be bothered to post under an account has to say. You don't like Facebook? Good for you. It doesn't make you smarter, it doesn't make your penis bigger, and it sure doesn't make you or your time more valuable than people who do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ukyoCE ( 106879 )

      Agreed, I don't have nearly as much time to play WOW anymore!

    • Facebook is cancer on the internet that is eating away creativity and innovation.
      10 hours ago via Facebook for iPhone. Comment Dislike

      You and 5 other people like this.

      CmdrTaco [fsdn.com] changed his profile picture.
      11 hours ago via Facebook mobile. Comment Like

      2i^7 people like this.

      CowboyNeal The surgery went well I see. Glad you're back to work.

      About an hour ago. Like

    • Facebook is cancer on the internet that is eating away creativity and innovation.

      You sound just like those other "theme" preachers.

      * Video games are responsible for an entire generation of fat and violent children.
      * Pirates are killing the music industry.
      * etc.

      And you get modded insightful for this. Yay Slashdot.

  • it's funny I was at a bbq yesterday (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    And we talked about Friendster (Remember Them?), MySpace (Remember Them), and Facebook. I say they should have sold that site last year. Now with many people being aware of location awarness etc..., my buddies have decided to delete their accounts. I admit I dabbled in it for a week, it was a complete waste of time. Call me old fashioned I still like using the phone and be in person when I talk to my friends.

    And I keep saying it over and over again, If I made my thoughts public or let everyone know who

    • If I made my thoughts public or let everyone know who my friends are I would be in a lot of trouble

      Did Putin add you as friend on facebook ?

      • Did Putin add you as friend on facebook ?

        I heard it was Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton who 'friended' him. I think he dodged a bullet by deleting his account!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Call me old fashioned I still like using the phone and be in person when I talk to my friends.

      Hey old timer, the interesting thing about new communication methods is that they aren't usually meant to kill existing ones -- just like telephone didn't kill in-real-life meetings.

      By the way, I'm wondering why you didn't call me instead of posting here?

    • I still like using the phone and be in person when I talk to my friends.

      So do I, but there's no denying it gets a wee bit expensive to sustain when my family are spread across the planet. Hey, how about that...a social networking site that facilitates me communicating with people who are important to me that are thousands of miles away. Neat thing, this Internet...

  • Oh, nuts... (Score:5, Funny)

    by pedantic bore ( 740196 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @07:19AM (#33487708)

    And to think that I thought that all of those wall postings were because of a sudden surge in my popularity...

    Well, at least I'm going to get a free iPhone out of it, or so I've heard.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by halfaperson ( 1885704 )

      Well, at least I'm going to get a free iPhone out of it, or so I've heard.

      And that will make you popular!

  • "No accounts were compromised" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CubicleView ( 910143 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @07:34AM (#33487762) Journal
    I'd like to consider that the insecurity settings I've applied to my account actually mean something. If an unauthorised post ends up on my wall I would consider that my account was compromised, particularly if the post was visible to others.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by igy ( 908081 )
      It depends on where it came from, if one of your friends did something stupid, that's hardly 'your' account that was compromised, it was your friend that authorised it
      • That's really what social networks are all about though. I apply security settings to my account so that only my friends can view my photos, wall posts, etc. If my *friends* account is compromised, then so is my account, since the attacker now may view my account unrestricted. They may not be compromised in the same way, but the account of every friend of a compromised account is also compromised. Think of a hack which found a clever way to inject malicious code into a wall post. Every time a friend cl
  • .. 4chan didnt get this first - imagine the chaos they would cause (if you've seen any of the screen captures of the dox pulled on porn stars, middle aged masturbating men on chatroulette and so on - just imagine the evidence posted on a person's wall and then the amount of bans handed out to those with pornographic content)

  • Why do people post Explicite details in info? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by upuv ( 1201447 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @07:56AM (#33487854) Journal

    With the non-stop assault on facebook by every hacker on the planet I have to ask one simple question.

    Why do people put every single tidbit of info possible into the info section of their profile?

    It's going to get grabbed at some point. No matter how careful you are. Either Facebook is going to change the privacy controls again, opening up another flood gate or a hack is going to allow total access to data.

    I regrettably accept the fact that social networking is here to stay. No matter how satanic some of you think it is, it is now a fixture in our lives. But as in the real world I at least use some degree of caution while I use it. Do I have perfect protection. Of course not. No one does. You can get mugged in a police station these days. So no protection is perfect. But good lord some people are just begging to get electronically raped.

    For example real time geo updates to your current location + putting in your address into the info tab and having no privacy settings.

    This parent post is just a simple example of a breach.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by drej ( 1663541 )
      I really don't know. I suppose it may have something to do with people STILL not grasping how dangerous the internet can really be. After all, it's "not real" and "anonymous".

      I recently asked a friend of mine (who is a facebook addict) why she was posting all this personal information and updates her status with every little thing that enters her mind. Her answer was along the lines of "I dunno...why not?" I fear the only way for people to wake up and finally take internet security (or at least facebook se

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ClioCJS ( 264898 )
        Your examples aren't very compelling to me. How hard is it to not post nude photos or use geotags? -Clint, living publicly on the internet for 15 yrs

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      Why do people put every single tidbit of info possible into the info section of their profile?

      Stupidity and / or naivety. It simple does not occur to some people that exposing their personal details on the internet equivalent of a Times Square billboard is a terrible thing to do.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ClioCJS ( 264898 )
      A: Not everyone is a walking vagina frightened of someone getting our info. Not everyone needs to hide in the shadows with a tinfoil hat because, OH NO, somebody might have INFORMATION on us. Not everyone is naive to think this is something they can actually control, anyway.
      • If you had grown up behind the iron curtain or lived under a truly repressive regime at some point in your life, you might feel differently. In any case, the civilization we presently enjoy is only a few steps removed from the barbarism of our past; you would do well to remember that before painting a target on your back.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ClioCJS ( 264898 )
          Yea, I understand the situation, but this is a new age. The people who hide only make those who don't stick out like sore thumbs more. If everyone lived in the open, there would be far too many targets to be eliminated. Those who continue to hide behind their own personal iron curtains only propagate the conformity. The internet didn't exist during the barbarism of our past; the paradigm is quite different now. Think of all the groups who have been willing to stand up and be counted, and are now, ever so sl

    • Facebook is set to show your birthday by default, and show who your friends are. My mom's never going to be on Facebook, so nobody's going to get her maiden name that way, and my birthday's set to "January 1, Random Year", so it's not showing the quasi-passwords to half the information in the world, but arrgh.

      What's worse is Ancestry.com, where if you're using it to share genealogy research, it typically *is* going to show your birthday and mother's maiden name... On the other hand, they're not trying to

      • You dp realize that if your birth was registered in the USA the contents of your birth certificate are almost certainly public information, right?

        • The problem is, like your SSN, some companies ASSume that anyone who can tell them your birthdate must be you.

        • Yes, the information's out there - but it's not in a conveniently accessible indexed format that anybody can get to without problems. (Of course, if you want official copies, it's become worse since the Patriot Act - try getting a driver's license reissued if you don't have an official copy of your birth certificate, and try getting an official copy of your birth certificate if you can't show your driver's license...)

  • typo squatter (Score:4, Interesting)

    by digitalhermit ( 113459 ) on Monday September 06, 2010 @07:58AM (#33487862) Homepage

    The other day I accidentally went to facebok.com. It was pretty obviously a typo squat, but what was more alarming was that the fake survey they provided had some correct information filled out (age, sex, etc..) Try it with and without cookies and it seems that that info is stored either locally or via the advertiser information sharing.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by kma ( 2898 )

      Facebook does not share information with advertisers. Facebook's ad system acts as a broker: an advertiser submits an ad, a demographic they wish to see the ad (e.g., gender, age, geographic locale), and a bid. Facebook pairs those ads with users that match the criteria.

      I work for Facebook, as an engineer in search.

  • How do spammers sleep at night? Do they realize how big of a douche they look like?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gmhowell ( 26755 )

      Probably too busy rolling around in piles of cash to care. Same with investment bankers and auto execs.

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