Photobucket's privacy problem finally solved

Photobucket has finally stopped allowing strangers to peek at users' private pictures. Byron Ng, a Canadian sysadmin with a penchant for finding Web security holes, found that knowing a photo's file name and the Photobucket link would be enough to expose the pics. This oversight allowed script kiddies to "fusker" — hacker slang for using an utility to extract images based on an identifiable sequence in the file name — to find uploaded naughty pictures or other interesting bits that weren't intended for public consumption. [News.com]

Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan private pics exposed by Yahoo hack

Want to see Paris Hilton's MySpace profile? How about Lindsay Lohan's? Don't worry about those pesky privacy settings. Thanks to "data portability," a faddish technology movement that the Valley has been buzzing about for months, you can see any profile you want on MySpace. Byron Ng, a Canadian computer technician with a knack for finding Web security holes, has discovered that Yahoo's integration with MySpace makes it easy to view photos for any profile. These images, which Ng obtained from Hilton's and Lohan's profiles, speak to the danger Yahoo and MySpace's lax data-sharing habits pose: More »

How a Canadian computer guy got Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan's pics

Byron Ng's instructions for viewing any MySpace profile: More »