Porn turns up on Facebook

Justin Bieber. Photo / AP

Facebook users were yesterday confronted by hardcore pornography on their feeds after a virus attack on the social networking site.

Pictures of extreme violence and faked photos of celebrities such as Justin Bieber in sexual situations have overrun the profiles of some Facebook users in the last 24 hours, according to internet security firm Sophos.

Facebook said it had "drastically limited the damage caused" by a spam attack that took advantage of a browser vulnerability.

"Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us," said Facebook, based in Palo Alto, California.

Users were tricked into pasting malware into their browsers, which in turn brought the offensive content, Facebook said.

"We've built enforcement mechanisms to quickly shut down the malicious pages and accounts that attempt to exploit it," Facebook said.

NetSafe chief executive Martin Cocker said there had been no reports of the Facebook porn plague in New Zealand but warned users to be cautious.

"There's probably a step that people take to get the images on their page, such as a 'hook' which will be something that appeals, so I think people need to have a heightened awareness to the fact that there is a lot of spam messages within Facebook at the moment."

Mr Cocker said parents with young children who use Facebook needed to be extra wary of the site in case they stumbled across the offensive content.

"Kids aren't supposed to be on Facebook if they're under 13, but the truth is that lots of them are."

If something looks suspicious, don't click on the link because it might post to your Facebook profile, Mr Cocker said.

While Facebook said it was getting this particular problem under control, another spam scheme was right around the corner.

"The very nature of how Facebook is designed to work is to share information among friends quickly so it's always going to be a target for this kind of trick and Facebook's always going to be battling against this," Mr Cocker said.

Facebook users lamented the images on microblogging service Twitter. "Has anyone been on Facebook lately?" tweeted Jay Ciroc, who identifies himself as a recording artist living in New Jersey. "My newsfeed looks like a porn site."

Some Twitter users said they would quit Facebook as a result.

- and agencies