Facebook Under Increased Spam Attacks

The company reveals that it’s become an increasing target for phishing and spam attacks.

According to Facebook’s security chief, it was in January that the company first noticed a rise in hack attacks and realized they’d become a majortarget. Among them were phishing attacks on members taking the form e-mails that purport to be from Facebook. There had even been unsuccessful data harvesting attempts.   One recent attack wastraced to a Seattle hosting service, he told an audience at the Infosecurity Europe conference, being held in London. However, further investigation revealedthat the service appeared to be paid by shell companies in Cyprus and Canada, so Facebook sent people to trace them.   "We took action against the individuals and the companies, andobtained an injunction against their use of Facebook," he said, adding that they’d won a $500,000 judgment.