Security News > 2011 > May > Researcher hacks Facebook to expose rival's private photographs
http://news.techworld.com/security/3280301/researcher-hacks-facebook-to-expose-rivals-private-photographs/ By John E Dunn Techworld 17 May 11 An Australian security researcher has compromised Facebook security in the most personal way imaginable, publically âhackingâ private photographs posted to the service by the wife of a disliked rival security professional. The declared intention of Christian Heinrichâs session 'For God Your Soul... For Me Your Flesh', presented to a reported 20 attendees of the Australian Security B-Sides conference, was to expose the weakness of Facebookâs privacy settings. Controversially, the IT contractor chose to prove his point by accessing private photographs posted to the social media site by the wife of a man he is reported to dislike, HackLabs director Chris Gatford. Heinrichâs âhackâ took seven days and involved guessing the URL of private Facebook images stored by Facebook using a separate content delivery network (CDN), which in his view represents a major security weakness for anyone posting personal data to the site. He was also able to hack into the coupleâs private images on Flickr. [...]