Facebook Source Code Leaked

August 12, 2007

FaceBook source code was exposed to some users due to some bug on the Facebook server resulting to which some user leaked the whole code by starting a new blog called FaceBookSecrets on Blogger.com and with a title Facebook Home Page Code

TechCrunch later reported about it and provided two possible ways for the Source code to get leaked:

1. Facebook employee may have leaked the code

2. The Facebook’s source code repository was hacked

Later they received an official response by Brandee Barker from Facebook in form of a comment. Following is what it says:
“Some of Facebook’s source code was exposed to a small number of users due to a bug on a single server that was misconfigured and then fixed immediately. It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way. The reprinting of this code violates several laws and we ask that people not distribute it further.

Thanks to you and the TC readers for helping us out on this one.

Brandee Barker
Facebook”

The cause was apache and mod_php sending back un-interpreted source code as opposed to output, due to either a server misconfiguration or high load (this is a known issue). It is also apparent that other pages have been revealed, and that this problem has occured before, but only now has somebody actually posted the code online.

This anyways doesn’t give out any much of information or any functions getting called. But must  have definitely provided several developers some hints to understand on how that works. Anyone starting their own FaceBook?

Share This

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Posted in Uncategorized