Facebook Hack: Problem Fixed; Company Knows Who Did It
Just two days after the worst Facebook hack in the site's history, resulting in the mass spamming of porn and violent images to users news feeds, the site appears to have rid most of the hack.
According to BBC News, Facebook said the hack can be blamed by browser vulnerability and said it was improving its systems to defend itself against similar attacks in the future."
They also report that a source told them Facebook knew who was responsible for the attack and will be taking legal action against the hacker.
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Facebook also knows the hack wasn't caused by super group "Anonymous."
The social networking site said the spam was caused by a "self-XSS vulnerability in the browser," according to BBC.
Users who had not recently updated their web browser, whether it be Firefox, Chrome, or Safari were among those hit especially rough.
Facebook's engineers had enforcement mechanisms in place to shut down any malicious accounts and pages but were just too over-flooded at once.
The site offered these three steps to ensure a safe Facebook experience:
"Never copy and paste unknown code into the address bar, always use an up-to-date browser, and use the report links on Facebook to flag suspicious behavior or content on friends' accounts."
They also stated the attack was unusual because most hacks on the social network are created to gain some sort of profit.
"This seems to be a purely malicious act. Facebook has a reputation for maintaining a reasonably family-friendly environment," wrote Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos, on his company's blog.
"Hopefully whichever browser it is that has the flaw will provide a fix ASAP, but as we know most people are slow to apply updates regardless of which browser they use (except Chrome)."
Facebook users that have been very vocal about the images displayed on their screens can now breathe a sigh of relief as the company is getting to the bottom of the situation.
As Facebook recovers from the worst hack it ever experienced, the creators and its users can only speculate if something like this can happen again, or if it could possibly get any worse. There have been no reports of stolen information or cracked accounts as far as personal information goes. All the hacks required a picture or video virus.
