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Photobucket plugs hole that revealed private photos

Photobucket is latest site to fix holes that allowed strangers to view members' private photos.

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
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Elinor Mills

Photobucket on Monday fixed a security hole that allowed people to view private photos of strangers.

All that was needed was the user ID of someone with a private album on Photobucket and the file name of one photo in their album, said Byron Ng, a Vancouver, B.C.-based computer technician who exposes security flaws in social networks and other sites.

Many MySpace users use Photobucket to post material on their MySpace pages, he said in an e-mail, adding, "This is a way to find 'some' private Photobucket albums."

MySpace and Photobucket are both owned by News Corp.

Photobucket fixed the hole Monday afternoon after being contacted by CNET News in the morning.

"Photobucket is aware of the issue and it has been resolved. A fix was rolled out this afternoon, less than 24 hours after the site was made aware of the issue," a Photobucket representative said in an e-mail.