Facebook confirms images of porn and violence, is investigating

Update: Facebook: images of porn, violence due to coordinated spam attack.

Last night, reports came in suggesting Facebook users have been experiencing a flood of very graphic images depicting pornography, acts of violence, self-mutilation, and bestiality for the last few days. I contacted Facebook when I first heard, and the company confirmed the NSFW problem with me this morning.

"Facebook is aware of these reports and we are investigating the issue," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. I responded by asking how many users are affected, what Facebook believes has happened, and what is being done, but I haven't heard back yet. If you are affected by this, please see Facebook virus or account hacked? Here's how to fix it.

Update: A little over two hours later, Palo Alto has sent along a slightly more detailed statement. "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. We have recently experienced an increase in reports and we are investigating and addressing the issue."

The company representative also said more information will be shared when it is known. In the meantime, the following is what we know so far.

Some members of the social network are complaining about violent and/or pornographic pictures showing up in their News Feeds without their knowledge that they have allegedly Liked. Others are being told by their friends that they are sending requests to click on links to videos, sending out bogus chat messages, or writing mass messages and tagged photos leading people to believe they are in the link.

In other words, this is the type of spam we've seen on Facebook before, but it's coming in at a much faster pace, as if it was something planned in advance. It's currently unclear if users are required to click on something to start spreading the spam, or if this is an actual attack leveraging some kind of vulnerability in the service's code.

Users are unsurprisingly outraged and as is typical with Facebook members, many are already threatening to close their accounts. I personally have not seen any such Facebook activity on my own profile, and neither have my friends, but the social networking giant has confirmed that something is up. The service's users complain about a lot of things but this is not a small issue. That being said, it's still not known how many of the site's 800 million active users are affected.

Some are thinking this is an attack, and are already blaming the hacktivist group Anonymous, which was rumored to be planning to take down the social network on November 5. Three months ago, the larger collective made a point to say it did not support such a takedown operation and in the end it did not take place: the service has remained operational all month.

Facebook is still up and running, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been exploited in some way. There is no proof that Anonymous is behind this flood of inappropriate images and links (normally such an attack would result in confirmation from Anonymous, in some shape or form), but it only takes a few members or ex-members to pull something like this off.

This is a developing story: I will continue updating you as Facebook's investigation progresses.

See also:

• Facebook virus or account hacked? Here's how to fix it.
• Facebook hacked: Are you seeing images of porn and violence?
• Facebook releases official Guide to Facebook Security
• Anonymous is not attacking Facebook today
• Anonymous does not support killing Facebook on November 5