Hacker who exposed Facebook bug to get reward from unexpected source moretan $50000

A man who hacked into Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page to expose a software bug is getting donations from hackers around the world after the company declined to pay him under a programme that normally rewards people who report flaws.

Khalil Shreateh discovered and reported the flaw but was initially dismissed by the company's security team. He then posted a message on the billionaire's wall to prove the bug's existence.

Now, Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer of cybersecurity firm BeyondTrust, is trying to mobilize fellow hackers to raise a $10,000 reward for Shreateh after Facebook refused to compensate him.

Maiffret, a high school dropout and self-taught hacker, said on Tuesday he has raised about $9,000 so far, including the $2,000 he initially contributed.

He and other hackers say Facebook unfairly denied Shreateh, a Palestinian, a payment under its "Bug Bounty" program. It doles out at least $500 to individuals who bring software bugs to the company's attention.

"He is sitting there in Palestine doing this research on a five-year-old laptop that looks like it is half broken," Maiffret said. "It's something that might help him out in a big way."

Shreateh uncovered the flaw on the company's website that allows members to post messages on the wall of any other user, including Zuckerberg's. He tried to submit the bug for review but the website's security team did not accept his report.

He then posted a message to Zuckerberg himself on the chief executive officer's private account, saying he was having trouble getting his team's attention.

"Sorry for breaking your privacy," Shreateh said in the post.

The bug was quickly fixed and Facebook issued an apology on Monday for having been "too hasty and dismissive" with Shreateh's report. But it has not paid him a bounty.

"We will not change our practice of refusing to pay rewards to researchers who have tested vulnerabilities against real users," Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan said in a blogpost.

He said Facebook has paid out more than $1 million under that program to researchers who followed its rules.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/facebook-hacking-mark-zucherberg-facebook-account-hacked-facebook-software-bug-khalil-shreateh/1/300454.html

Google raises bug reporting rewards to $5000

Google had recently announced that it is considering offering as much as $5000 to those people who report bugs under the Chromium and Google Web Vulnerability Reward Programs. And less than two weeks later, the company has gone on record to confirm this bit of news.
According to a report on PTI, Google has already implemented the new rewards which are as much as 5 times more than the previous ones. Basically, the search engine giant’s big bounty program encourages people across the world to detect bugs and other problems with the Chrome browser or the operating system. And those who manage to spot these are rewarded with money based on how harmful the bug is.

The company based in Mountain View has received 2000 security reports ever since it started the initiative about three years ago. And Google had disclosed the amount of cash that it has given out in this time period to all the people who sent those reports in, through a blog post on the official Online Security blog. The total stands at a whopping $2,000,000. Over a million is for Chromium VRP, while the rest of the money has been offered as rewards to those who detected vulnerabilities in Google Web VRP.
The Search engine will give $5000 to those who notice problems that pose a significant threat and provide a detailed analysis of the severity of these bugs. And the already-implemented bonuses, will continue to be given to those who spot errors.
And people who have found bugs can head over to the official website for more information.

Philips Light Bulb Vulnerability Could Leave Some In the Dark

 
Watch This Video ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iEJSQSTfTM
According to research unveiled this week some types of web-enabled light bulbs are vulnerable to a flaw wherein an attacker could literally leave users of the bulbs in the dark.
Philips’ Hue brand lighting systems can be exploited, according to independent researcher Nitesh Dhanjani who published a paper, Hacking Lightbulbs (.PDF) to accompany his research on Tuesday.
Hue received scattered acclaim last year after it popped up at the Apple store and was later called the best new product of 2012 by Forbes. Essentially it’s a wireless system that can manage an infrastructure of LED light bulbs via iOS and Android devices.
The main problem here lies in the fact that Hue’s bridge uses a whitelist of associated tokens to authenticate its requests. Anyone else who can get on its network and glean at least one of the whitelisted tokens can issue HTTP commands to the system and in turn control the lightbulbs.
Dhanjani notes that in testing, determining one of the whitelist tokens was not difficult, it was simply the MD5 hash of the MAC address of the users’ iOS or Android device.
“This leaves open a vulnerability whereby malware on the internal network can capture the MAC address active on the wire (using the ARP cache of the infected machine). Once the malware has computer the MD5 of the captured MAC addresses, it can cycle through each hash and issue ‘all lights off’ instructions to the bridge via HTTP.”

Attackers can repeatedly insert code to trigger a “sustained blackout,” and rig the victim’s system so they can remotely change people’s light bulbs.
In one – perhaps farfetched situation – an attacker could even cause a blackout in a person’s home or office just by tagging a completely black image of them on Facebook. This stems from functionality in the app that lets social media dictate users’ lighting. Hue can change lights to reflect the color of an Instagram or Facebook photo and blink a certain number of times if they receive an email.
Dhanjani contacted the makers of the system, Philips, several times via Twitter in June to address the issues with Hue but the company never responded with an email to Dhanjani to further explain the vulnerability.
When reached this week Philips claimed it was aware of Dhanjani’s whitepaper but insists the vulnerability is only possible on local area networks, adding that if users secure their internet, “traffic passing between your devices and across the internet will remain fully secure.”
The news that an internet-connected lighting system is vulnerable shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise. In this day in age – as we’ve learned with cars, pacemakers, washing machines and even coffee makers – practically everything that can connect to the internet can be compromised.
While Dhanjani warns “lighting is critical to physical security,” and that if anyone were to exploit this vulnerability in a hospital or public venue, it could cause trouble, it’s not likely many of these vulnerabilities will really affect the general public.  In advertising, the product is catered more towards the home and in most situations it’s hard to comprehend being left in the dark as anything more than just a nuisance.