Prosecutor Sandip Patel said that Glenn Mangham, 26, had hacked into the social networking giant’s computers from his bedroom in the northern England city of York and stole what Patel described as “invaluable” intellectual property.
26-year-old Glenn Mangham admitted accessing the account of a holidaying Facebook employee in June 2011, prompting fears in the US that the company was had fallen victim to industrial espionage.
Mangham claimed he had previously assisted Yahoo and was hoping to do the same for Facebook.
He told Southwark crown court his actions were "to identify vulnerabilities in the system so I could compile a report that I could then bundle over to Facebook and show them what was wrong with their system."
“He acted with determination, undoubted ingenuity and it was sophisticated, it was calculating,” Patel told London’s Southwark Crown Court ahead of sentencing Friday. He added later: “This represents the most extensive and grave incident of social media hacking to be brought before the British courts.”
It was not immediately clear exactly what information Mangham stole, although police said that he didn’t manage to compromise any personal user data. Scotland Yard said in a statement that the breach had occurred “over a short period of time” in April of last year but did not divulge precisely how he managed to break into the computers.
The statement said that Facebook Inc. discovered the breach in May and alerted the FBI, who traced the source of the attack back to Britain. Scotland Yard’s e-crimes unit raided Mangham’s home on June 2.
The software development student pleaded guilty on Dec. 13. He had argued that he was merely trying to show the Palo Alto, California-based company how to improve its security, but Judge Alistair McCreath said that Mangham’s actions had “very serious potential consequences” which could have been “utterly disastrous” for Facebook.
“You and others who are tempted to act as you did really must understand how serious this is,” McCreath said.
Facebook said in a statement that it applauded police and prosecutors’ efforts in the case, adding, “we take any attempt to gain unauthorized access to our network very seriously.”
This shows how the security measures of Facebook are thin still. We personally request users not upload any kind of their most private photos/videos in Facebook till they improve their security.
