Monday, February 28, 2011

Facebook challenge with a virus and then it takes Zuckerberg

ROME - There is a new generation at work. It moves and lives in the web, created from the inside, the manager. It 'a generation that escapes the understanding of the majority, that follow their own rules and invented codes to access and recognition. His speech was translated to humans in the film by David Fincher, The Social Network, which told the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook.

A genius, a hacker, the Man of the Year, the youngest billionaire on the planet, and above all a visionary. Difficult to reach and capture the attention, in order to succeed you have to go by the codes, algorithms, blacks holes, cords and fancy cuts. Chris Putnam's story is proof. Typing this name on Facebook, is a blurred picture, and "like" signed by 30 thousand people.

Putnam is a hacker in 1988 with a virus that has challenged the big social networks. His goal was not to annoy Zuckerberg, but get noticed. His adventure began in 2005 when Chris, then 19 years old, studying at Georgia Southern University, and together with his two friends Laverdet Marcel and Kyle Stoneman, decided to create a worm that replicates through an exploit XSS (Cross-site scripting) via a field not handled properly (Websites).

The worm was able to do three things: friendship called in to Chris, he replied in the profile and changing the graphics in the user profile that faithfully replicate MySpace. The worm replicated user code in user in quickly and quietly, spreading virally through friends who saw the profile of someone else.

The three hackers could so quickly change the main script to produce a series of surprise effects on passing accounts under their control. "It was a job that made much impact and rearrange all the profile fields in MySpace unsightly boxes and color schemes," said Putnam. But this made them easily detectable.

Three brilliant tracked and braggarts. In less than 24 hours from the worms, Putnam was contacted by Dustin Moscovitz, one of the co-founders of Facebook. With the spread of the virus had infected people immediately started to complain. Although many employees of Facebook were infected, including an internal test account called The Creator.

As he later explained to Putnam, the 'creator' was not Zuckerberg: "But we figured that he had been forced to take stock, and had considered the operation a resounding success." In less than a day by Moscovitz Putnam was invited to present themselves to the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto.

This is not the first of a long exchange of messages. "The fact that Moskovitz knew my identity was not a big surprise since the interaction of worms with my account was granted. In fact we had arrived to provide information on how to contact us, "said Putman. Moskovitz's reaction was still fun." Hey this is fun, but it would seem you're erasing your contact information on the profiles of users when the worm copies itself again.

And so it is not nice. "In return for so much condescension, Putnam began to reveal in detail along with the worm that had identified weaknesses in the social network. After about a month he was asked if he wanted to work for Facebook. The network follows paths and job interviews without rules.

Putnam was scared. At that time another attacker was arrested after he did the same thing. A virus for MySpace, the promise of social networks and recruitment after the call, the prison. "When I arrived at home, on the second floor had to meet Dustin. I was tense but when the door opened and found Moskovitz and the policemen standing in front of me.

"Putnam was hired and began working for Facebook a few days after the interview. Today he works with his friend Marcel Laverdet together with the staff of most popular social network in the world. And 'one of the engineers of the site, regularly participates in forums on the absolute nerds like Somethingawful.

com, which is quite famous. His favorite pages are facebbok (a profile in the profile), a page on Facebook and Engineering "Easter eggs": easter eggs that are actually a gift in secret programs, or secret codes that programmers insert within their programs and which are not mentioned in official manuals.

They are generally used by programmers to write their names secret. To see an easter egg you have to know the sequence of buttons or steps to be taken. In some software companies entering these "surprises" is allowed. Thus, among the most likeable hacker pranks, the list of emoticons to Facebook, there is one designed especially for Chris Putnam, is the 'Weird face' (and is called by typing: Putnam:).

"I will always be grateful to Facebook and his passion for extravagant and engineers with a background from hackers," said the engineer in an interview on the Web, quite to the surface because we could be back on earth.

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