Facebook goes after posters of porn, violent images

Saying it has identified the perpetrators behind a flood of pornographic and violent images that hit the social network, Facebook officials vowed to seek swift justice against them. Facebook also said it has tracked down the scammers responsible for what it called a spam attack, tech site PC Magazine reported. "In addition to the engineering teams that build tools to block spam we also have a dedicated enforcement team that has already identified those responsible and is working with our legal team to ensure appropriate consequences follow," PC Mag quoted a Facebook spokesman as saying. Earlier, Facebook blamed the torrent of extreme smut on a "self-XSS vulnerability in the browser" that tricked users into pasting and executing malicious javascript in their address bars. This caused them to unknowingly share this offensive content, with the highly offensive content visible to others but not to the user whose account was used to spread it. But UK's The Register said Facebook did not immediately divulge the identity of the scammers. "We've identified the responsible parties and are pursuing legal action at this time," said a Facebook representative. Tough stance vs spamming The Register noted Facebook's enforcement team has already taken a tough stance against spamming. In 2009, it sued serial spammer Sanford Wallace and two associates for spamming members with wall posts that posed as messages from their friends. Facebook was eventually awarded $711 million in the case. Earlier this year, Wallace was criminally charged with hacking more than 500 million Facebook accounts. Facebook has sued other alleged spammers as well. Malicious group The Register cited researcher Mike Geide's finding that the most common ploy in the ongoing deluge comes from malicious Facebook groups that ask users to join and then enter JavaScript into their URL bar. The scripts contain obfuscated code that generates invite messages to all of a user's Facebook friends and includes an invisible link to a link that it said no longer works. — TJD, GMA News