The student, aged 26, from York hacked into the popular social networking site last year. Although he claimed his intentions were to help Facebook and act as a ‘security consultant’ for them his unauthorised intrusion caused Facebook having to spend over £125,000 to rectify the damage.
The prosecution dismissed the claim that he was an ‘ethical hacker’ and handed down a custodial sentence for what it believed to be malicious action on his part.
Previously, the student had taken part in similar action against popular search engine, Yahoo!, for which he was not prosecuted and it is believed that he did indeed work with Yahoo to improve its security.
The incident could have had far more disastrous consequences for the industry giant, which is currently believed to be worth $100 billion.