For Facebook, it wasn’t a great way to start the weekend – the site’s home page source code was posted online for all to see. On the bright side, data belonging to Facebook’s many users appears to be completely safe and unaffected.
Following that revelation, we should share more (relatively) good news – it was the company’s own mistake, not a hacker’s tinkering, that caused this disclosure, according to spokeswoman Brandee Barker. Barker popped in on a TechCrunch conversation to write, “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.”
And so it shouldn’t be especially devastating that the code was posted on Facebook Secrets (a blog that appears to have been created for the sole purpose of publishing this information). Barker nonetheless asks that no one else reprint it, however.
This sort of occurrence is becoming something of a trend – in the past two weeks, information has leaked regarding Facebook’s revenue and its advertising rates. The social network has also gotten some unwanted attention over sexual predators, and lost a number of advertisers due to a mix-up involving the BNP.
The source code leak isn’t as potentially damaging as those last two stories, but it’s still not the best thing for Facebook’s reputation.
