Image used with permission by copyright holderTime’s Man of the Year no longer has a page on his own site. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s fan page (http://facebook.com/markzuckerberg) has been taken down by FB engineers after a hacker gained access to it. According to TechCrunch, a weird wall post was made on the page before it was pulled off the social networking site.

　　Yesterday, the following message appeared on Mark Zuckerberg’s fan page, seemingly written by Zuckerberg himself: “Let the hacking begin: If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011”

　　Image used with permission by copyright holder

Zuckerberg wasn’t hacked, but someone was

Many have speculated that Zuckerberg may have had poor passwords, but the way Facebook’s fan pages are set up, Zuckerberg may have been only one of many people who had access to his fan page. Fan pages can be linked to multiple accounts, meaning a number of people could have administrative rights to his page. If I were Mark Zuckerberg, I would task an employee with updating my fan page. From what we’re seeing, Zuck may do just that.

　　Image used with permission by copyright holderThe Facebook founder’s actual page (http://facebook.com/zuck) is still up and running and doesn’t appear to have been tampered with. While it’s clear that an account with posting access to the Mark Zuckerberg fan page was compromised, it was likely either somebody else’s account, or done by a very dumb hacker (possible) who would ruin a public fan page, but ignore the primary account tied to it. Unlikely. Zuckerberg’s fan page may be down because Facebook security doesn’t know which account connected to it was compromised.

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A hacking epidemic?

Hacking is becoming a more and more prevalent issue. Last month, the entire Gawker Website network was hacked, leaking 1.5 million usernames and passwords. Zuckerberg’s fan page is only one of many attacks since, including one on Trapster, McDonald’s, and a number of other companies have been attacked since. This is without even touching the Anonomous hacker group’s DDOS attacks on many major companies. Just a few days ago, a hacker started selling .gov and .edu domain names he had taken over. Unfortunately, this trend shows no sign of slowing. Hopefully, this incident will prompt Facebook to begin instituting some basic security enhancements, like SSL, and more stringent password requirements. In November, it was found that Facebook and rival Twitter failed many basic security tests.