Student jailed in Britain for "extensive" Facebook hack

(Reuters) A British student, who hacked into social networking website Facebook’s internal networking risking “disastrous” consequences for the portal, was sentenced the term of eight months on Friday (Feb 17) in London.

Glenn Mangham, a 26-year-old software development student, admitted infiltrating social networking portal Facebook from his parental home in northern England.

The case was described by prosecutors as the most serious case of its kind.

"This was the most extensive and flagrant incidence of social media hacking to be brought before British courts," said Alison Saunders, London's Chief Prosecutor told media in London on Feb 17. "Fortunately, this did not involve any personal user data being compromised", he added.

Facebook first became aware of a security breach in its internal network in April and called in the FBI. The U.S. agents established the source of the hacking was based in Britain and British police raided Mangham's home in June.

Mangham said he had previously helped search engine Yahoo Inc improve its security and wanted to do the same for Facebook. However, prosecutors rejected his explanation.

"He said he wanted a mini project and chose Facebook because of its high-profile internet presence," prosecutor Sandip Patel told London's Southwark Crown Court.

"The prosecution does not accept that the defendant's actions were anything other than malicious."

The court was told Facebook spent $200,000 in dealing with his actions, the Press Association reported.

Judge Alistair McCreath told Mangham his actions were not harmless and had "real consequences and very serious potential consequences" which could have been "utterly disastrous" for Facebook.

"You and others who are tempted to act as you did really must understand how serious this is," he said.

Facebook responds to massive phishing scheme

(CNN) Facebook has responded to a an apparently massive attempt to steal passwords from its users.

"There's another spoofed email going around that claims to be from Facebook and asks you to open an attachment to receive a new password," read a post on the Facebook Security page.

"This email is fake. Delete it from your inbox, and warn your friends."

Facebook will never send users a new password in an attachment, the post says.

The messages claim to be from Facebook, with a return address that looks legitimate. A message sent twice to a CNN.com staffer reads:

Hey [user's name],

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed. You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,The Facebook Team.

McAfee security warned users in a blog post Wednesday that the link is a password stealer that becomes active when the user clicks on it. Once installed, malicious software, or malware, could potentially access all username and password information used on a computer, not just on Facebook, the post said.

Reports suggest the scheme continued to spread on Friday.

McAfee and Facebook urged users to not open the attachment and immediately delete the message, if up-to-date security software programs don't catch the message first.