Hactivists claimed to have seized control of nearly 300
Facebook community groups yesterday. The move by an outfit called Control Your Info (CYI) is an
effort to expose how vulnerable online reputations are to tampering. CYI said it was a doddle to get into poorly protected
administrative settings at the website.
Writing in a blog post at
www.controlyour.info the hackers said
that they were not carrying out a scare tactic and did not have to hack into
any software. The method used a feature of the software which can be used in
bad ways.
Facebook Groups suffer from a major flaw, if an
administrator of a group leaves, anyone can register as a new admin. So, in
order to take control of a Facebook group, all you really have to do is a quick
search on Google, the site said.
Once CYI accessed groups as administrators it had
authority to change anything, including pictures, descriptions and
settings. CYI fired off messages to the groups telling them they
had been "hijacked" and the justification for the attacks. CYI
rechristened each group with its name and logo.
CYI promised to restore the violated groups to their
original conditions after it makes its point.