Recently Facebook patched an information disclosure vulnerability that exposed page administrators, cyber security researcher Mohamed Baset reported this week.
Baset claimed he discovered the issue, which he described as a “logical error,” within a few minutes of receiving an invitation to like a Facebook page on which he had liked a post. Looking at the email’s source code, the researcher noticed that it included the name of the page’s administrator and other details.
A data security expert provided an explanation on why such information disclosure vulnerability can represent a problem to Facebook page administrators.
“For many individual Facebook pages, the administrator and the page will share an identity, so putting the administrator name in the page’s email isn’t really giving away much,” the data security expert said. “But for business or community pages, which might have a number of co-administrators, you wouldn’t expect Facebook to reveal anything more than the name of the page itself.”
“…this protects individual employees from getting bombarded with comments, questions or even insults, in place of the account itself,” the expert added.
The data security researcher said this was the second time he reported a vulnerability to Facebook without having to write any code to demonstrate his findings.
After being notified through its bug bounty program, Facebook acknowledged the vulnerability and decided to award the expert $2,500 for his findings. Facebook reported that last year it paid out more than $880,000 for 400 vulnerability reports submitted by white hat hackers.
Working as a cyber security solutions architect, Alisa focuses on application and network security. Before joining us she held a cyber security researcher positions within a variety of cyber security start-ups. She also experience in different industry domains like finance, healthcare and consumer products.
