Facebook investigating spread of porn, animal cruelty images

Social networking giant Facebook is now investigating what it called a "coordinated spam attack" that saw many users see sexually explicit and violent images on their news feeds. In a statement posted on tech site "Boy Genius Reports," Facebook traced the attack to exploited browser vulnerability. "Our efforts have drastically limited the damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of investigating to identify those responsible. 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 said, according to BGR. Facebook spokesperson Andrew Noyes emailed Reuters a statement saying they do not know yet who was behind the attack and a motive was not clear. Facebook said its engineers have been working diligently on this "self-XSS vulnerability" in the browser. It also said it has built enforcement mechanisms to quickly shut down the malicious pages and accounts that attempt to exploit it. "We have also been putting those affected through educational checkpoints so they know how to protect themselves. We’ve put in place backend measures to reduce the rate of these attacks and will continue to iterate on our defenses to find new ways to protect people," it added. A separate article on PC World said many Facebook users took to Twitter expressing outrage over the images that computer security firm Sophos said ranged from modified celebrity photos to pictures of extreme violence and animal abuse. PC World also quoted Romanian security vendor BitDefender as saying the "Anonymous" hacker collective had created a classic Facebook worm codenamed "Fawkes Virus" last July, and pledged to use it to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, Nov. 5. The pledge was not Paul Ferguson, senior threat researcher at Trend Micro Inc., said Facebook and other "Web 2.0" sites are easy targets for such attacks since they pull in a lot of content from outside sources. "It seems every other day there is some new Facebook 'threat,' but this is just the new reality of Web 2.0 and social networking," Ferguson said. "It is 'low-hanging fruit' for criminals." — With Reuters/KG/VS, GMA News