The Palestinian hacker who broke into Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Timeline to call attention to a bug he discovered will get at least $11,000 as a reward — but not from Facebook, it will come from an online crowdsourced campaign.

The GoFundMe campaign to reward the hacker, Khalil Shreateh, raised more than its initial goal of $10,000 in approximately one day. At press time, 199 donors had contributed to the campaign with contributions totaling $11,305. Marc Maiffret, Chief Technology Officer of security firm BeyondTrust, launched the effort after Facebook refused to reward Shreateh.

Maiffret wrote an update on the campaign page, thanking all the donors and underlining the reasons why he launched the reward effort.

"I hope this has raised awareness of the importance of independent researchers," he wrote. "I equally hope it has reminded other researchers that while working with technology companies can sometimes be frustrating, we can never forget the greater goal; to help the Internet community at large, just as that community has helped donate over ten thousand dollars to Khalil within a day."

Shreateh discovered a bug last week that allowed anybody to post on someone else's Facebook Timeline, even people that are not Facebook friends.

The hacker initially used Facebook's whitehat disclosure program, a service that rewards bug hunters for reporting vulnerabilities, to inform the company of the issue. But his multiple reports didn't catch the attention of various Facebook security engineers, and Shreateh eventually resorted to posting on Zuckerberg's Timeline.

Facebook considered his action a violation of its terms of service and of the rules of the whitehat program, which prohibit researchers from testing the bugs they find on real people's profiles.

"We will not change our practice of refusing to pay rewards to researchers who have tested vulnerabilities against real users. It is never acceptable to compromise the security or privacy of other people," wrote Facebook's Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan.

Facebook's refusal may have been a blessing in disguise for Shreateh.

Not only have his actions received extensive press coverage, his $11,000 reward is most likely more than what Facebook would have rewarded him.

In the bug bounty program's two years of existence, as the company announced in early August, the largest reward Facebook has given out is $20,000. There is no cap on the amount of a single reward, but the minimum is $500.

On the GoFundMe page, donors showed their support for Shreateh.

"You did the right thing Khalil," wrote Marcus Milne, who contributed $10. "Even though multi-billionaire Zuckerberg has refused to hand over the small bounty, you have a community of appreciate and honorable people who will give what they have to help a deserving person. Humanity is still alive!" "Khalil, respect for finding the vulnerability, man," wrote Andrey Makarov, who donated $5. "Facebook are fools. Don't let this bullshit affect you, keep on hackin'! Greets from Israel."

Unlike Kickstarter, a GoFundMe campaign continues until its creator decides to end it. Maiffret said he is going to leave the fundraising effort active for now, while he works out a plan to transfer the funds to Shreateh.

Image: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images