Syrian Young Man Discovers Facebook Bugs Causing Security Breaches

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

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

To ensure that his concerns were legitimate, Baraa Habab surprised Facebook's own administration 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 the pages. One of these pages was precisely that of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, where the young Syrian wrote on his wall in both English and Arabic: "There is no such thing as 100% protection, there is always a loophole.". And that's how Baraa got Facebook 's attention, and was even offered a contract to work in security.

With a link to Facebook, Baraa ended up discovering another software error later in 2018. An error 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 helps companies in the area of information security and protection, as well as playing a role in training and education on the subject of digital extortion.