Facebook Security lapse Allows Paris Hilton Pictures to be Leaked

by Rob Walker | March 25, 2008 at 01:33 pm | 2491 views | 2 comments

A Vancouver-based computer technician, Byron Ng, was looking for flaws in Facebook's security - and boy, did he find one.

Using a template Ng designed, the Associated Press was able to access thousands of photos, including ones from Facebook's owner and Paris Hilton drinking at a party.

A Canadian hacker exploited a recent upgrade to the networking site's privacy settings to view pictures that were intended to be private, including some of Paris Hilton partying with her brother, Barron Nicholas, at the recent Emmy awards.
Facebook was told about the problem yesterday afternoon, and said it had since fixed the bug.
Byron Ng, a computer technician from Vancouver, began looking for flaws in the site's security after an upgrade last week purportedly gave Facebook's 40 million users greater control over the way they shared material such as photographs with their friends.

The news follows Facebook Inc.'s announcement last week that it was implementing tougher measures to allow members to restrict access to their personal profiles.
But Byron Ng, a Vancouver computer technician looking for flaws, was able to use computer coding to pull up private pictures of Facebook members and their friends. The private photos included those of Paris Hilton at the Emmy awards and of her brother Nicholas drinking a beer with friends.