Facebook has launched legal action against a posse of 17 hackers associated with a Canadian company that manages a portfolio of adult content websites, Infoworld reports.
The Facebook case alleges that in June servers controlled by the defendants used tricky computer hacking techniques to make more than 200,000 attempts to grab personal information stored by users Facebook sites.
Facebook says the “automated scripts” the defendants used to seek the information caused error messages to be generated by the Facebook site, but has not revealed if any user information was successfully collected.
The Canadian company named as a defendant in the litigation, Istra Holdings, controls SlickCash.com, a business that pays web publishers for referring internet traffic to its adult content websites.
Facebook says the hacking attempts cost it at least $5000 to investigate. As well as damages, it is seeking to bar the defendants from accessing its computer systems in the future.
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