Facebook has said it would address the issue of a spam attack which caused the site to be bombarded with hardcore pornographic and violent images this week.
Security firm Sophos said the offensive content in Facebook news feeds included porn images, pictures of graphic violence, animal abuse, etc. The images had "flooded" the site over the past 24 hours or more, it added.
The needle of suspicion points to the Anonymous hacktivist group, which claimed in a video on YouTube it would "kill" the social network. But experts have expressed doubts over the video’s authenticity.
Senior technology consultant with Sophos, Graham Cluley, said in a blog post, "It’s precisely this kind of problem which is likely to drive people away from the site. Facebook needs to get a handle on this problem quickly, and prevent it from happening on such a scale again."
"It isn’t presently clear precisely how the offending content has been spread – whether users are falling for a clickjacking scheme, are being tagged in content without their knowledge, have poorly chosen privacy settings, have been tricked into installing malicious code, or have fallen victim to another vulnerability inside Facebook itself," Cluley added.
A Facebook spokesperson said, "We have recently experienced an increase in reports and we are investigating and addressing the issue."
