Famous social-networking site Facebook has been reported to be under increased attack by spammers and phishers. Speaking at the Infosecurity Europe conference in London, Max Kelly of Facebook stated the attacks have become really serious over recent months. He explained that such attacks included non-specific threats, for instance edge-of-network penetration attempts and application flaw exploits. The more specific threats included phishing attacks against users, in the form of counterfeit emails claiming to come from Facebook.

Kelly also believed Facebook had come under attempted cross-site scripting as well as SQL injection attacks. However, he also emphasised the fact that the security layer in Facebook’s system was successful in overruling and informing Kelly’s security team of such effort.

When asked about a privacy and security flaw that had been recognised in Facebook’s mobile alternative last year - in which the contacts of the users had their email addresses listed, irrespective of the fact whether those contacts had chosen to reveal such details or not - Kelly claimed the span for harvesting such details was quite restricted as a consequence of relatively small extent of every user’s personal network. Anyone who intends to harvest such data would have to undergo a cumbersome process; it would not be worthwhile for any spammer to do so, he added.