Syrian Young Man Discovers Facebook Bugs Causing Security Breaches

Baraa Habab is the name of a young Syrian man who recently discovered security flaws in Facebook, yet his concerns were ultimately ignored by the American company. To draw attention to these problems, Baraa hacked the account of one of Facebook's founders, leading them to thank him and offer him a job offer.

The 25-year-old from Damascus was forced to leave the university, where he was studying Information Engineering, as well as his home country due to the civil war that has been raging since 2011. Driven by his passion for the programming universe, Baraa's resilience and hard work were crucial to endure all the difficulties he has faced since then. Between 2016 and 2017, he eventually discovered a software bug on Facebook, so he wrote several times reporting this problem, both in Arabic and English, but without any kind of feedback .

To ensure that his concerns were legitimate, Baraa Habab surprised the Facebook administration itself by accessing several private and public Facebook pages, without knowing the username, email or password associated with the page, and without even contacting the owners of those pages. One of these pages was, precisely, that of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, where the young Syrian wrote on his wall, both in English and in Arabic: "There is no 100% protection, there is always a loophole." And that's how Baraa got Facebook 's attention, and he even received a contract offer to work in the security area.

With a Facebook tie-in, Baraa eventually discovered another software bug later in 2018. A bug that would allow the privacy of millions of users to be affected without their knowledge. In addition to helping countless people to find solutions to technical problems, as well as many victims of Facebook fraud, Baraa Habab also assists companies in the area of information security and protection, and also plays a training and education role when it comes to the topic of digital extortion.