Facebook Under Siege: Hackers Exploit XSS-Flaw in Massive Spam Attack

By Rob Scott
November 17, 2011

Facebook suffered one of its largest ever security breaches this week when hackers found a way to spread violent and explicit images to some users’ profiles.
Hackers reportedly tricked users into copying and pasting malicious Javascript code onto their browsers, thus providing attackers access to personal profiles.
“The ‘self-XSS’ exploit refers to the fact that social engineering techniques were employed to trick users into entering the code necessary to execute the attacks, as opposed to other types of XSS-based attacks where the perpetrators inject the code on to the Website,” reports eWeek.
Facebook reported yesterday that it had identified those responsible for the attack, was taking control of the spam and making plans for preventing such a future attack.
“Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us, and we are always working to improve our systems to isolate and remove material that violates our terms,” said a Facebook spokesperson, adding that no user accounts or data were compromised.

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