4 Theories of last weeks Facebook's 'porn and gore' epidemic

This is just a recap of last week's news regarding Facebook porn attack. Facebook users had been facing awkward moments as graphic images of sexual and violent posts turn up in their feeds, but who's behind this attack? How did this "porn and gore" problem" manage to manifest on a site supposedly well protected?

It was reported that Facebook users who innocently clicked a tempting link inadvertently flooded their feeds with extremely graphic images of sex acts, mutilated animals and people, and even "Jesus porn," which were automatically posted for all their friends to see. Angry users took to Twitter to vent their disgust with "unstoppable torrents of hardcore pornography and gory, violent pictures," and threaten to decamp to Google+. Facebook acknowledged the issue, blaming it on a "coordinated spam attack," and said it was fixing the problem. But who's to blame for Facebook's flood of photos of dead dogs, Justin Bieber photoshopped into compromising positions, and naked octogenarians?

The week's editorial staff has 4 theories:

Theory 1: Blame Anonymous

What is anonymous? Who are they? Actually, there is little information about this group, but they are a group of hackers that practice online activism, they are what we call "hacktivist." Previously, they have threatened to destroy Facebook on November 5, however, this attack did not took place, as it was said that there was no signal from their leader, and that this attack hasn't been decided by all of its members, but by only a fraction of them. Their reason was "Facebook has been selling 'sensitive' user information to government agencies and giving secret access to security firms so that they can spy on Facebook users — as all data is stored on Facebook's servers and can be accessed at anytime." According to Kevin Parrish in Tom's Guide, Anonymous did threaten to attack Facebook using a powerful "Guy Fawkes virus" they developed. That virus purportedly takes control of your Facebook account and then infects your friends' accounts.


Anonymous threatens to destroy Facebook.


Anonymous announces operation to release Guy Fawkes virus on Facebook.

Anonymous had posted videos, "blatantly admitting to the Facebook attack." I buy it, says Adrian Chen in Gawker. "Spamming gore and porn is definitely one of Anonymous' trademark moves."

Theory 2: No other hackers are behind this

"I find it hard to believe that Anonymous would stoop to this," says Chris Matyszczyk in CNET News. And "indeed, Facebook told CNET it knows who is responsible" for this malicious, massive spam attack, and is readying legal action. Even if Anonymous is not officially behind this, says Emil Protalinski in ZDNet, it only takes a few "ex-members to pull something like this off."

Theory 3: Blame Facebook itself

The flood of violent and pornographic photos and video links is actually "the type of spam we've seen on Facebook before," says Protalinski, only now it's "coming in at a much faster pace." Even the link bait is the same — "Kim Kardashian, etc.," says Violet Blue in ZDNet. So what's changed? "Facebook's recent timeline upgrades" make that spam easier to propagate. And while grannies and impressionable teens are the ones being exposed to this thrash, the attack is "a bizarrely clever slap at the one thing Facebook is such an extreme hypocrite about": Adult content.

Additionally, note that Facebook Developers module can also serve as an entry point for such attacks. It has happened before, only that this is the big one.

Theory 4: Blame the gullible users

Hackers couldn't have done this without the help of easily fooled Facebook users. "My own Facebook news feed is image-spam free," says Kashmir Hill in Forbes. Why? My Facebook friends and I apparently aren't "unwise enough" to fall for the bait. Unless you click on links in messages like "OMG, I can't believe Kim did this" or "Wow, I can't believe you did this in this video. I LOLed," you and your friends won't "end up with naked grandmas and photoshopped teen idols in your feed."

This is true as most Facebook users who aren't familiar with spam usually bite the bait. Most especially if the bait is intriguing, eye-catching, or popular. The worst part on this is that once one of them caught the bait, it is shared on the news feed, and when friends see it, they also join in. Sometimes, they simply comment, which is still unwise, because by commenting, although they didn't fall in the trap, they could still risk their friends who would be able to see the link with the comment.

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Facebook Porn Attack

Facebook Porn Attack

On Thursday afternoon, the biggest social networking site, Facebook confirmed that coordinated spam attack has been sending a torrent of hardcore porn and gore into Facebook users' news feeds. Scattered reports say that images ranging from bestiality to graphic violence and dead babies to Justin Bieber have been taking over entire feeds for the past two days. Facebook, however, says that they have managed to contain the damage, and announced their next move to crush the hackers who caused it in court.

"During this spam attack users were tricked into pasting and executing malicious javascript in their browser URL bar causing them to unknowingly share this offensive content," Facebook's Andrew Noyes explained in a statement. "Our efforts have drastically limited the damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of investigating to identify those responsible."

So far bloggers have a good idea. Adrian Chen at Gawker was one of the first to cover the attack and suggested that the full-on assault of nasty images is definitely one of Anonymous' trademark moves, noting that the hacktivist announced an attack on Facebook with something called the "Guy Fawkes virus." ZDNet's privacy blogger Violet reiterated that the style of images is very much along the lines of 4Chan's /b, which is where the Anonymous began, and added that the content suggested a much more direct attack on Facebook — the company — rather than an attack on its users. Graham Cluley at the Sophos Naked Security blog stopped short of guessing who the perpetrators might be but noted that Facebook users were threatening to flee the site in scores, after seeing the images.

This incident eventually led to Facebook's bombardment with angry-sounding and negative comments, which seems to have shaken the company's integrity up a bit, since they too were composed of hardcore programmers themselves. Such an attack was just humiliating. The social network stayed quiet about the attack until Tuesday afternoon. They didn't reserve any hesitation in threatening to hunt down and throw the book at the spammers responsible for the gross flood of filth. "In addition to the engineering teams that build tools to block spam," Noyes said, "we also have a dedicated enforcement team that has already identified those responsible and is working with our legal team to ensure appropriate consequences follow."

Just last year, Facebook helped hunt down self-anointed "Spam King" Sanford Wallace in relation to three separate attacks on the social network. Having compromised 500,000 accounts and sent an estimated 27 million spam messages, Wallace earned himself various charges of fraud and intentional damage to a protected computer. A judge eventually ordered Wallace to pay Facebook a total $711 million in damages. Wallace, who is considered the inventor of spam, had already racked up hundred of millions of dollars in fees from other sites and is unlikely to pay the fine, though he faces 16 years in prison. Similar cases have yielded similarly jaw-dropping figures, including a $360.5 million judgment against spammer Philip Porembski earlier this year and an $873 million judgment in 2008 against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital for spamming.