On Thursday afternoon, Facebook confirmed
that a "coordinated spam attack" has been sending a torrent of hardcore
porn and gore into Facebook users' news feeds. It's not pretty.
Scattered reports say that images of everything from besitaliality to
graphic violence and dead babies to Justin Bieber
have been taking over entire feeds for the past two days. Facebook says
it's managed to contain the damage. Next, the company plans on crushing
the hackers who caused it in court.
Related: The Infamous Hacker Facebook Hired as a Developer
"During this spam attack users were tricked into pasting and executing
malicious javascript in their browser URL bar causing them to
unknowingly share this offensive content," Facebook's Andrew Noyes
explained in a statement. "Our efforts have drastically limited the
damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of
investigating to identify those responsible."
Related: Facebook Co-Founder Reflects on 'The Social Network'
So far bloggers have a pretty good idea. Adrian Chen at Gawker was one of the first to cover the attack
and suggested that the full-on assault of nasty images "is definitely
one of Anonymous' trademark moves," noting that the hacktivist announced
an attack on Facebook with something called the "Guy Fawkes virus."
ZDNet's privacy blogger Violet reiterated
that the "style of images is very much along the lines of 4Chan's
/b, which is where the genesis of Anonymous occurred," and added that
the content suggested "a much more direct attack on Facebook — the
company — rather than an attack on its users." (If you think you've been
hit, ZDNet put together a handy how-to-fix-it blog post, too.) Graham Cluley at the Sophos Naked Security blog stopped short of guessing who the perpetrators might be
but noted that Facebook users were threatening to flee the site in
scores, after seeing the images. "Facebook needs to get a handle on this
problem quickly, and prevent it from happening on such a scale again."
Related: Facebook Trumps Google's Traffic, but Will It Pay Off?
Which brings us to Facebook's so far angry-sounding response. Thought
the social network stayed quiet about the attack until Tuesday
afternoon, they didn't reserve any hesitation in threatening to hunt
down and throw the book at the spammers responsible for the gross flood
of filth. "In addition to the engineering teams that build tools to
block spam," Noyes told The Atlantic Wire, "we also have a dedicated
enforcement team that has already identified those responsible and is
working with out legal team to ensure appropriate consequences follow."Related: Does Mark Zuckerberg Have Sergey Brin's Resolve on China?
Just last year, Facebook helped hunt down self-annointed "Spam King" Sanford Wallace
in relation to three separate attacks on the social network. Having
compromised 500,000 accounts and sent an estimated 27 million spam
messages, Wallace earned himself various charges of fraud and
intentional damage to a protected a computer. A judge eventually ordered
Wallace to pay Facebook a total $711 million in damages. Wallace, who
is considered the inventor of spam, had already racked up hundreds of
millions of dollars in fees from other sites and is unlikely to pay the
fine, though he faces 16 years in prison. Similar cases have yielded
similarly jaw-dropping figures, including a $360.5 million judgment against spammer Philip Porembski earlier this year and an $873 million judgment in 2008 against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital. For spamming.
Via news.yahoo.com
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