Facebook battle sex and violence spam attack

Facebook have been battling to get the recent spam attack targeting their members under control. The attack shows images containing graphic sexual acts and violence. They have issued a statement warning their members to be careful and to help prevent their accounts from being hacked. Over 800 million people use Facebook.

Facebook are warning users not to click suspicious links on friends pages and to not click on links for deals that are ‘too good to be true'. Facebook has become a prime target for spam due to their massive user base. Spammers only need to be successful with a small portion of their audience for the malicious code to spread like wildfire.

Facebook claim that less than 4 percent of the shared content on their site is spam related although Symantec say that 74 percent of email is spam related, though the majority of it gets filtered out before reaching the inbox.

This week many users have issued official complaints to Facebook because they have found links to violence and pornography on their pages. This latest spam attack is noticeable due to the type of content being shared. Symantec say that the spammers are using tricks to get people to click links, such as offering money and free plane tickets. If people clicked on the link they were then asked to copy and paste a line of dangerous javascript code into the address bar of their web browser. The content is then spread on that users Facebook page without knowledge.

Facebook have been quick to say that no user data or accounts have been compromised in this recent attack, although they have urged people not to paste code into their browser.

Facebook said “Our team responded quickly and we have eliminated most of the spam caused by this attack. We are now working to improve our systems to better defend against similar attacks in the future.”

Kitguru says: They did indeed act quickly, but with 800 million users potentially at risk, they needed to.

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