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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s fan page appears to have been hacked Jan. 25.
Though the company has not responded to inquiries about exactly what took place, reports have surfaced that the CEO’s page was compromised and the following message was posted: “Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a -social business’ the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011.”
The message comes just days after Facebook announced it had raised $1.5 billion in funding from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies, bringing the company’s total value to $50 billion.
The hash tag of “hackercup2011” at the end of the note may be a reference to Facebook’s Hacker Cup contest, a programming competition the company announced in December. According to Websense, the URL shortener in the message links to a non-malicious page on Wikipedia.
The incident follows the breach of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s account earlier this week. In that case, Sarkozy’s page was compromised to say he was not seeking re-election in 2012. The post was subsequently taken down.
The message on Zuckerberg’s page received more than 1,800 likes before the social network took the page down. Another Zuckerberg page can be found here.
“Although the reason for the rogue comment is unclear (a short message post seemingly political in nature), the event certainly highlights the need for increased security with usernames and passwords,” blogged Carl Leonard, senior manager of security research at Websense. “This is becoming even more important as many sites are now permitting sign-in using accounts set up in other social networks and services.”