Facebook hacked, users seeing images of porn and violence

Leeky

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Escalating numbers of Facebook users are reportedly being flooded with graphic images containing pornography, violence, self-mutilation and bestiality. The issue was first reported a couple of days ago, in a limited number of accounts, but reports are beginning to appear suggesting the problem is more widespread than initially thought.

The Christian Post, one of the first to break the news said, "some of the hacks happen in the form of 'click' spam being sent out. A popular spam involves Kim Kardashian with a link to a video. It will say something like 'after watching this video I lost all respect for Kim.' Upon clicking, the link takes the unsuspecting person nowhere, and hacks the account sending the same spam to all of the user’s friends."

They also pointed out that other spam tricks involved sending mass messages and tagged photos misleading people into believing they were somehow involved in the content. Interacting with the spam leads to the same result of yours and others' walls being spammed with the aforementioned images.

"I have 5000 friends. My feed is littered with porn. I can’t even check my news feed with anyone around because of it. Just saw one with a guy who had his skull bashed in and his brains on the street. Another one was the devil… Besides the countless naked girls. I’m about ready to deactivate," said actress and director Courtney Zito when speaking to the Post.

Affected users of the dominant social networking site are outraged, with many threatening to delete accounts. A similar problem with rampaging spam led in large part to the downturn of MySpace several years ago. At the time, many people affected by the problems moved over to the "more secure" Facebook networking site.

As the problem worsens people are pointing the finger at the hacktivist group Anonymous as being to blame, and that the rumoured "fawkes Virus" is responsible for the outbreak of unsolicited vile images popping up in peoples' profile news feeds.  The attack on Facebook does not have the usual feel of Anonymous though - the hacking collective usually target sites with DDoS attacks, not let loose viruses. There is also no current evidence to suggest Facebook is infected with the Anonymous linked virus either.

Who exactly is causing this is still uncertain, but Facebook are likely to have their work cut out resolving this latest issue amid growing anger from its users. This comes less than two weeks after researchers engineered social-bots to steal 250GB of Facebook users' data.

Permalink to story.

 
I'd noticed a few posts with people saying they had been tagged in pictures and videos of a sexual nature and to ignore them. But wasn't aware it was due to a hack, just thought it was targeted nastiness.
 
spam =/= hack
social engineering =/= hack
this article's title == fail
 
urm but this has been around for years. Always the same kind of "girl commits suicide after dad embarrasses her" kind of thing..
 
Facebook was not hacked... When someone tricks you into clicking something that takes your log in information it is not a hack... it is a phishing scam.... The primary difference is that a hack is due to the lack of security of the website... a phishing scam is due to either a lack of careful web browsing or just plain stupidity on the part of the user... Facebook as a social networking site can not really do anything about these hacks unless they prevent the ability for people to post links to other websites which isn't going to happen. What happens on these other websites is not under Facebook's control and yes they can black list those sites but by the time they learn of them millions of people are going to of already been effected and the perpetrators will create a new site... the only way to prevent these things from happening is for users to learn their lesson.... and the actress mentioning the problem just needs to change her password on her facebook to keep from putting these things out of her account... this is not similar to myspace's demise which was due to the spam that myspace put on every page... this is ALL about the user.... man up and take responsibility you piles...
 
people shouldn't click on things that are vague and don't have much information. sometimes it may not be as obvious but you should still ask the person, hey what is this? start a conversation before clicking a link. Never click a link unless you are sure it is legitimate!
 
I guess i'm glad I only use facebook on my iPhone and only when I get an alert, No stealing my details!
Although in a way facebook was asking for this, I just hope it has affected more people out there to push people to try other services.
 
Guest said:
spam =/= hack
social engineering =/= hack
this article's title == fail

Oh come on, can't we let this slide? We all know Techspot needs the pageviews... /sarcasm
 
Guest said:
spam =/= hack
social engineering =/= hack
this article's title == fail

Where do you get "=/=" from, its "1 != 2"

Also Facebook is way to popular and deserves all the flak it gets =P If you are stupid, then deal with it.
 
If you're thinking about deleting facebook...just do it. Whether you're an actress or just a regular user, don't invest too much thought in it. The world has more than enough problems for you to ponder without the status of your digital presence being in question...
 
monrayl said:
Originally posted by paynetrain007:
Never click a link unless you are sure it is legitimate!
I agree with you 100%. One can never be too careful on the net.

The bad thing is that this requires thinking, the good thing is that this puts food on my table.
 
I have been getting these images from people who are on my friends list. When I notify the people what's happening, some of them don't have a clue what's going on. When I tell them there account has been hacked, they give me the usual, "HUH?" These people should not own a computer.
 
Where do you get "=/=" from, its "1 != 2"
Actually seeing as this is a forum and no one here is attempting to dynamically execute their C or C++ code, then I would say it's actually "is" or "is not".

:rolleyes:
 
Good, let all the users delete there accounts, perhaps this will weed out all the stupid people from Facebook and only leave the intelligent ones who are smart enough to know you don't have to click two links and enter your password etc to view a video!!!

I have received these types of posts far too often, and then have to lecture the person about it. This isn't Facebook's fault, it is the fault of the *****s clicking the links and not using their brain and actually THINKING about why this fantastic video they have been told about isn't available right away without having to click a link!!! Unreal.
 
What bothers me is how they're referring to this as a "HACK", which is bullshit. This isn't a hack, it more closely resembles a "trojan", where you scam someone into giving away their information due to their own stupidity. This isn't a hack job at all.
 
I like how the article says people are threatening to delete their account. Who really gives a **** that you delete it.... noone .... its not going to affect the millions of other people!! There is no way to stop all the spam, unless you remove all the ****** who currently use Facebook who are clicking on these links. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the link is fake.
 
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