Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page has been hacked by an unknown person who posted a status update suggesting that the site should let people invest in it rather than going to the banks.

The page belonging to the 26-year-old Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder who was named Time's Man of the Year in 2010, was hacked some time on Tuesday.

The message left by the hacker read: ""Let the hacking begin: If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn't Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a 'social business' the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it? What do you think? #hackercup2011".

A wall post on Mark Zuckerberg's hacked Facebook page. The link leads to a Wikipedia page on 'social business'.

That seems to be a reference to reports that Facebook has been valued at around $50bn following investments made by Goldman Sachs and a Russian venture capital firm. There have been rumours that the company is either preparing for a stock market flotation or that the shares purchased by Goldman Sachs would be sold on to rich investors who want to benefit from the company's burgeoning success.

Embarrassingly for Facebook, more than 1800 people "liked" the update before the company took down its chief executive's page. Facebook has made no public statement about how the hack occurred.

It is not clear how the break-in occurred, said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the security company Sophos. "Mark Zuckerberg might be wanting to take a close look at his privacy and security settings after this embarrassing breach," he noted. "It's not clear if he was careless with his password, was phished, or sat down in a Starbucks and got sidejacked [had his login details stolen over the air] while using an unencrypted wireless network. But however it happened, it's left egg on his face just when Facebook wants to reassure users that it takes security and privacy seriously. Maybe Mr Zuckerberg would be wise to get a refresher on computer security best practice."

More likely though is that Zuckerberg's page is handled by a number of people, and that one of them might have had their access details stolen or guessed, which would give an attacker the same access to the page.

The only clue left by the hacker was a link embedded in the status update to a specific revision of a Wikipedia page about "social business", which differs from the current page in one prominent link, and another link to a photo for Facebook's "Hacker Cup" - described as "an annual worldwide programming competition where hackers compete against each other for fame, fortune, glory and a shot at the coveted Hacker Cup" - whose final rounds will be held at Facebook's own headquarters on 11 March.

Facebook had not responded to requests for comment when this story was filed.

The hack comes just days after the Facebook account belonging to the French president Nicolas Sarkozy was also hacked to suggest that he was resigning; on regaining control of the account, Sarkozy pointed out that he plans to run for president again next year.