Facebook Code Leaked! Students would panic, but they’re too busy Facebooking > ConnectU, Facebook, guest editors

Facebook Code Leaked! Students would panic, but they’re too busy Facebooking

by Maureen O'Connor | August 14, 2007 at 2:39 pm

At 12:54AM on August 11, 2007 a blog entitled Facebook Secrets went live. Which would have been cool, but it was just a bunch of computer code garbledy-gook. Luckily, college has this habit of turning out computer scientists along with its IvyGate editors, so we have since ascertained that said garbledy-gook was actually an unauthorized leak of Facebook's main source code, prompting questions about the mega-popular site's security.

Facebook representative Brandee Barker responded to the hubbub as one would expect from the PR of a billion-dollar company: Through the highly esteemed avenue of comment #29 on a blog report about the leak. Barker wrote,

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.

Personally, we prefer netizen fietronic's response to the original garbledy-gook-filled blog:

OH EM GEE YO! I"M TTLY GNNA START MY OWN FAZE BOOK LOLZ!!!

Fietronic was promptly hired by ConnectU. --MAUREEN O'CONNOR

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11 Responses to “Facebook Code Leaked! Students would panic, but they’re too busy Facebooking”

pwned 07 Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I believe the image accompanying this story should say “All UR CODE ARE BELONG TO US!”
In the Real World Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Anyone who uses the term “pwned” is immediately classified a loser, virgin, or (more commonly), both.
What does Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 10:38 am
pwned mean? I keep seeing it all over AutoAdmit.
Y '10 Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 11:18 am
The reference, for those not nerdy enough to get pwned’s allusion, is to a code for the popular RTS game series Warcraft. It is a code which grants the player an instant win in any scenario.
it's Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 11:52 am
“owned” with a typo.
d7 Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
@Y’10: the term ‘pwn’ most certainly pre-dates any multiplayer version of Warcraft. Psh. Also, what real man doesn’t enjoy video games, Doritos, and beer? It’s an excellent combination.
b' 08 Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Funny, I saw that. It was really weird. Facebook was being redonkulously slow loading a page and then all of a sudden a page with some code was up on my monitor. I didn’t think much of it, so I closed my window. If I only knew what I had gotten into!
... Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
“redonkulously”
actually Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
pwned is not a typo but means “player owned” and its a term used by gamers and people that make fun of gamers
@ "What does" Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
What idiot doesn’t know enough about the internet to Google “pwned” before posting a comment asking what it means?! This is why I think grades sometimes do you no good. You need to be PRACTICAL!!
Sam Says:
August 17th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
The same thing happened to me, except that it happened again and again when I entered a specific search query. Mine had entertaining comments, I think I saved them somewhere, let’s see…

* Here’s the deal, Lucas wrote a ton of shit in this file, then I got picky
* because I wanted it to be a function that I could call from WAP and SMS and
* such, so I stripped pretty much everything out. Go check out lib/s.php
* for all of Lucas’ beautiful search code.

// Holy shit, is this the cleanest fucking frontend file you’ve ever seen?!

There was a bunch more code, but I’m not interested in hacking the site. I just thought it was amusing to read these guys comments; obviously they aren’t far out of college.