Facebook Knows Who Did It, But Porn, Gore Still Showing Up

PALO ALTO, Calif.—Though Facebook is not naming names, it has reported that it knows the identity of the people responsible for this week’s porn and gore infestation, and it does not appear to be Anonymous, the notorious hacking group that had previously threatened to attack Facebook over privacy and billing practices it did not like. Though it is keeping identities under wraps, the social network said it will pursue legal action against the people responsible for the unprecedented attack that breached the Facebook Immunity System (FIS), which reportedly analyzes 650,000 actions a second, leading many users to consider closing their accounts altogether. FIS has been an effective barrier against many threats, but it isn’t perfect, according to PC World, which reported that “earlier this month, researchers showed how botnets could be created to harvest information from members without being detected by FIS.” The latest attack, which also avoided detection, “was based on tricking members into pasting JavaScript code into the address bar of their browsers. The code caused a member to share offensive material with their friends.” According to firsthand accounts from colleagues as well as news reports from outlets such as msnbc.com, images containing porn and extreme violence were still showing up in people news feeds, but seemingly not as frequently as earlier in the week or last week, when the scam first began. Now, as U.S. lawmaker wants answers. Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) wants her people to meet with Facebook "to make certain—to the extent possible—that it doesn't happen again," said Mack spokesperson, Ken Johnson. "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,” Facebook said Thursday. For politicians already concerned about the social network’s commitment to privacy, such assurances may ring hollow.