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Hacker Was Planning On Livestreaming The Deletion Of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook Profile, Now Just Wants Bounty

By Mizuki Hisaka
Published on: 18:05 PST, Sep 28, 2018

A Taiwanese hacker named Chang Chi-yuang announced that he was planning on livestreaming the biggest hack of all: deleting Mark Zuckerberg’s profile from Facebook. But after his intentions were announced, it seems that Chang has had a change of heart, and issued the following statement, according to the Verge.

“I am canceling my live feed, I have reported the bug to Facebook and I will show proof when I get bounty from Facebook.”

The “bounty” that he’s referring to is part of Facebook’s Bug Bounty Program. It allows hackers and other security specialists to report any vulnerabilities, but to qualify, the reporter must follow a long list of requirements.

One of the requirements says that people can “not interact with other accounts without consent (e.g. do not test against Mark Zuckerberg’s account).” Perhaps Chang was alerted that if he really did livestream the profile deletion, that he’d forfeit any bounty money. It’s hard to know how much Facebook will end up paying the hacker, if any, although it states that the minimum payment is $500.

The original livestream was scheduled for Sunday, September 30, at 6 a.m. in New York. However, the hacker canceled the event on Friday afternoon, described Engadget. Chang’s intentions appear to be monetarily-motivated, according to a recent post.

This is what Chang said about his reasons for hacking.

“I don’t want to be a proper hacker, and I don’t even want to be a hacker at all. I’m just bored and try to dabble so that I can earn some money.”

Later, he even said that “I shouldn’t try to prove myself by toying with Zuck’s account.”

We’ll just have to wait and see if Chang gets paid through the bounty program. It appears that not all hackers get paid. For example, in 2013, Khalil Shreateh did not get a bounty for hacking into Zuckerberg’s account and posting an Enrique Iglesias video to a friend’s account. Perhaps that was due to a violation of the bounty rules, which asks people not to use Mark’s profile to prove bugs and vulnerabilities.

In other news, Facebook’s under scrutiny again for its latest security breach, which reportedly has affected 50 to 90 million users. While the details of the breach are still a bit fuzzy, new information has revealed that the breach includes the “Single Sign-on” feature. This means that people who signed up on other websites like Spotify, Airbnb, and Tinder using their Facebook profiles may have been affected by the breach.

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