Just over a week ago I covered an issue with the Flyer Exchange application in which the Cubics ad network was effectively overloaded due to a denial of service attack indirectly caused by the application. This morning, I was notified that the creator of the application, Henrick Shyu, seemed to have be banned from Facebook and the application is no longer functioning.
So was the application worth the effort for Henrick? Proabbly not. As I illustrated a week ago, the click-thru rate was horrendous, hovering somewhere around 0.04%. The primary lesson learned? Don’t try to exploit vulnerabilities in the Facebook platform for the purpose of a short-term spike in cash flow. It won’t work. Conversely, for those that are hackers and simply perform exploits for the sake of doing them, go for it, but do it for educational purposes and don’t expect to profit from it.
For those that were hoping to profit from the Flyer Exchange application, I wouldn’t expect a check in the mail anytime soon. Until the next exploit pops up, these guys appear to be gone for good.
