Porn Hack Attack Spams Facebook

For porn and disturbing images, Facebook is the new place to be.

Tuesday morning reports began surfacing -- mostly via Twitter -- of Facebook users having pornographic and disturbing pictures show up in their news feed.

ZDnet was the first to report that the images -- involving Photoshopped pornographic pictures and mutilated animal images -- were being spread via a "linkspam virus."

Users were reportedly being duped into clicking on innocuous news feed links and then being fluttered with the images.

"[We are] aware of these reports and we are investigating the issue," a spokeswoman for Facebook told the BBC

Internet security firm Sophos said the images hit the Palo Alto-based social network about 24 hours ago.

Late Tuesday Facebook said it had discovered what was causing the problem.

"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 Spokesman Andrew Noyes said in a statement. "Our engineers have been working diligently on this self-XSS vulnerability in the browser."

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