Mark Zuckerberg's Private Photos Released After Facebook Security Glitch Is Discovered

4:07 PM PST 12/7/2011 by Kimberly Nordyke

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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

After discovering the flaw, a body building blog posts pictures of the site's co-founder and CEO hanging out with his girlfriend, playing with a puppy and meeting President Obama.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's private photos were released to the public after a body building blog discovered a security flaw on the social networking site.

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BodyBuilding.Com posted photos of the 27-year-old entrepreneur, who co-founded the site, and explained to readers how they could access any Facebook user's private pictures. [The post has apparently since been removed.]

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The photos, which can be seen here, show Zuckerberg cooking with his girlfriend, handing out Halloween candy, playing with his puppy -- and meeting President Obama.

The blogosphere was unimpressed.

"These photos wouldn't even qualify for the 'celebs are just like us' section in Us Weekly, because he is more boring than us," opined Rebecca Greenfield of the Atlantic Wire.

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The Business Insider's Matt Lynley echoed that sentiment, calling the collection "rather boring."

Basically, users could report a person's profile as inappropriate, then check the option "help us take action by selecting additional photos to include with your report" and from there right click on any other image from the person's profile and open in new tab to view the full image.

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After the photos were posted, Facebook fixed the glitch and issued a statement:

"Earlier today, we discovered a bug in one of our reporting flows that allows people to report multiple instances of inappropriate content simultaneously. The bug allowed anyone to view a limited number of another user's most recently uploaded photos irrespective of the privacy settings for these photos. This was the result of one of our recent code pushes and was live for a limited period of time. Upon discovering the bug, we immediately disabled the system, and will only return functionality once we can confirm the bug has been fixed."

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The company added that it makes the privacy of its users' data a "top priority" and continues to "work with the industry to identify and resolve legitimate threats to help us keep the site safe and secure for everyone."

It's not the first time a security flaw has allowed Zuckerberg's private photos to be accessed. In 2008, the Associated Press reported that a Vancouver-based computer technician had found a way to view the albums of Zuckerberg and other high-profile Facebook users like Paris Hilton simply by guessing the ID of the photos.