A hacker claimed he would take down Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page in a live broadcast before appearing to pull out of the audacious plan.
Taiwanese hacker Chang Chi-yuan told his 27,000 followers he would target the Facebook founder’s own account this Sunday.
But on Friday afternoon he said he would instead flag up the supposed glitch to Facebook in return for money, saying he had not expected the world’s media to pick up on his plans.
Chang describes himself as a ‘bug bounty-hunter’ who claims to have exposed flaws in a series of high-profile companies’ security systems, Bloomberg reports.
Taiwanese hacker Chang Chi-yuan – a self-described ‘bug bounty hunter’ told his 27,000 followers he would target Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s (pictured) own account
In the post he said: ‘Broadcasting the deletion of Facebook founder Zuck’s account. Scheduled to go live’.
Later he wrote in a comment: ‘I am canceling my live feed. I have reported the bug to Facebook and I will show proof when i get bounty from Facebook.’
Chang has more than 27,000 followers on Facebook while Zuckerberg, who founded the website in 2004, has more than 118 million.
The Taiwanese social media celebrity has previously said: ‘I don’t want to be a proper hacker, and I don’t even want to be a hacker at all.
‘I’m just bored and try to dabble so that I can earn some money.’
He claims to have targeted the software of major corporations including Apple and Elon Musk’s Tesla.
In another incident he was reportedly sued by a bus company after saying he had bought a ticket for one New Taiwanese dollar (three U.S. cents).
In 2013 a Palestinian hacker wrote a post on Zuckerberg’s public Facebook wall in what he said was an effort to reveal a weakness in the site’s security.
Chang has more than 27,000 followers on Facebook while Zuckerberg, who founded the website in 2004, has more than 118 million. Chang claims to have exposed flaws in a series of high-profile companies’ security systems
But Facebook said it was not a bug and denied him any reward for reporting a glitch in the website.
Zuckerberg has previously been targeted on other social media platforms by hacking group OurMine which claimed to have changed his biography on Pinterest.
The group OurMine briefly altered the Facebook CEO’s tagline to read: ‘Don’t worry, we are just testing your security’.
In 2016 the group also claimed it had gained access to the password and phone number associated with his Twitter account.