A British student has been jailed for eight months after hacking into Facebook's source code.

The Register reports 26-year-old computer science student Glenn Mangham pleaded guilty to hacking into the social networking site between April and May last year.

He had hoped to expose security flaws to Facebook as he claimed he had done for Yahoo! However, The Register reports the intrusion was detected by Facebook and reported to the FBI, which passed the case over to the British police.

The hack was traced to Mangham's parents' house and he was sentenced to eight months in prison on Friday.

In sentencing, The Registar states Judge Alistair McCreath told Mangham his actions were anything but far from harmless and had "real consequences".

Facebook released a statement that said: "We take any attempt to gain unauthorised access to our network very seriously, and we work closely with law enforcement authorities to ensure that offenders are brought to justice."