HomeFacebook is the Victim of Another Online Security Breach
The world’s most popular social media site, Facebook, reported on Monday that it was aware of certain accounts which were responsible for hacking into other user’s accounts and posting pictures containing violence and pornographic pictures. Although the exact details of the breach are not immediately known, Facebook representatives have issued a statement saying that they are currently working on a fix to the solution and will have the accounts responsible for the spam attack shut down immediately.
Although details of the attack were not specifically identified, the more probable cause of the attacks resulted in users being tricked into entering some sort of malicious code, which in turn allowed the hackers to manipulate the profile and wall pages of various users. This allowed them to post the disgusting pictures and create the world-wide stir in Facebook land.
These recent attacks call into question Facebook’s ability to verify second party programers and developers who are currently allowed to create and publish code off the website’s infrastructure. Many of these programs are for games and other “pass the time” applications, which are fairly popular with a good majority of users. However, in light of these recent attacks, many of those affected were on Twitter explaining how they were considering deactivating their Facebook pages.
This isn’t the first security breach that has been reported by Facebook, and it certainly won’t be the last. However, with almost 1 billion users on the website on a daily basis, it’s no wonder and probably just a matter of time before they were hit with another security breach. The only comforting news that is available to all of Facebook’s users is that more and more measures will be taken into consideration, implemented, and deployed in an attempt to identify and target any other potential threats.
The year 2011 has been marred by countless acts of “online terrorism” with the most notorious being from the hacker group “Anonymous” who was responsible for bringing down Sony’s Playstation Network for almost 3 solid months. As a result, it’s likely to see more and more online service providers like Sony and Facebook to take a round turn on their internal security efforts in the new year otherwise they face other challenges from outside attacks and malicious coders. As with all things online, users are reminded not to trust emails or other phishing schemes if they don’t come from a trusted source. If an offer online sounds too good to be true, then chances are, it more than likely is.