14 DAY TRIAL // A 25-year-old UK man has been charged with hacking into multiple Facebook servers that handled internal and external services.
Glenn Steven Mangham, a student from York, is accused of repeatedly bypassing Facebook's security and accessing its protected systems.
Mangham was arrested by Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) officers in early June on suspicion of serious offenses under the Computer Misuse Act.
At his first court hearing this week, prosecutors claimed that the young man, who doesn't appear to have a Facebook account, has repeatedly hacked into what was described as a "Facebook puzzle server" between April 27 and May 9.
The company uses such servers to issue challenges to programmers. Mangham's intrusions into the puzzle server has led to service disruptions.
On April 29 he also attempted to hack a server running the mailman mailing list software. The company used the server for both internal and external purposes.
A week later he hacked into a so-called Facebook phabricator server which is designed to help developers design games and other apps easier.
The prosecution also claims that he "made, adapted, supplied or offered to supply" a program that hacked this Phabricator server. It also noted that the young man had "considerable technical expertise."
Investigators were impressed by his skills. A Scotland Yard source told The Daily Telegraph that detectives were not aware of any other hacking attempts of this extent against Facebook from Britain.
Facebook has recently begun offering bug bounties to security researchers who identify vulnerabilities in its public-facing services and report them responsibly. The company also prides itself by not taking hackers to court if their intentions are not malicious.
This is clearly not the case of Glenn Steven Mangham, whose actions were disruptive and intentionally malicious according to investigators. He is charged with five separate counts of computer hacking.