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Facebook Helped the FBI Exploit Vulnerability in a Secure Linux Distro

Facebook security personnel and engineers helped the FBI track down a notorious child predator by helping a third-party company develop an exploit in a

According to Vice, for years Facebook had been tracking a suspect who had regularly used the platform to extort young women for nude photos and videos, as well as send them threats of rape, bombings, and mass shootings at schools—California man Buster Hernandez, who was charged and arrested in August 2017 and recently pleaded guilty to 41 counts which could see him spend the rest of his life in prison. Hernandez was able to evade capture for so long because he used Tails, a version of Linux designed for users at high risk of surveillance and which routes all inbound and outbound connections through the open-source Tor network to anonymize it. “The only acceptable outcome to us was Buster Hernandez facing accountability for his abuse of young girls,” a Facebook spokesperson told Vice.. “This was a unique case, because he was using such sophisticated methods to hide his identity, that we took the extraordinary steps of working with security experts to help the FBI bring him to justice.”

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