Facebook hacked, usernames and passwords extracted

PanARMENIAN.Net - Facebook has been hacked, with a number of usernames and passwords extracted, Digital Spy said.

There's no need to hit panic stations though, as it turns out the hacker responsible isn't a total wrong-un, Digital Spy said.

Instead of targeting Facebook with malicious intent, hacker Orange Tsai used his firewall-dodging wizardry to find a weakness in the social network's internal server systems in order to earn money.

Not by selling the usernames and passwords he managed to extract either, but by alerting Facebook to the weaknesses.

Having compromised the company's systems back in February, digital bounty hunter Tsai immediately alerted Facey-B, receiving a $10,000 reward two weeks later.

It turns out the weakness discovered had been placed there by another white hat hacker, with Facebook suggesting the breach actually highlighted the rigidity of its security measures.

"Neither of them were able to compromise other parts of our infrastructure, so the way we see it, it's a double win," Facebook Security Engineer Reginaldo Silva told Betanews.

"Two competent researches assessed the system, one of them reported what he found to us and got a good bounty, none of them were able to escalate access."

Facebook said the issue has since been fixed.