A team of Indiana University doctoral students is responsible for finding a glitch in Facebook’s security protocol. Rui Wang and Zhou Li, who research systems security at the School of Informatics, discovered that a vulnerability in Facebook’s platform code allowed private information like phone numbers to become accessible to bogus third party websites.
Wong said the team simulated a hacker’s behavior in order to discover the site’s vulnerability. For Lee, their research was an opportunity to make a lasting impact.
“I’m not sure, but I think most Americans live on Facebook, so if one day they found when they get up their information lost to some other guys and their words posted with some garbage information, then I think there might be some very serious problems,” said Lee.
Wang and Lee created a video demonstrating the problem and posted it online. Facebook officials saw it and responded with a fix.