Facebook is suing a Canadian company that specialises in online pornography, alleging that it hacked into the social networking site’s computers in an attempt to obtain the personal information of Facebook users.
An Ontario-based company that trades under the name SlickCash was named in a complaint filed last week by Facebook in San Jose, California.
According to wire reports, Facebook alleges that the SlickCash, which is run by a company called Istra Holdings, and a number of other defendants attempted to access Facebook’s servers at least 200,000 times in a two-week period in June.
Court documents allege that “each of these requests sought to direct Facebook’s computers to send information on other Facebook users back to (the defendant’s internet) address.”
Facebook also claims that the alleged hacking attacks “were detected as unauthorised attempts to access and harvest proprietary information” and that “the defendants knowingly and without permission took, copied, or made use of, data from Facebook’s proprietary computers and computer network”.
It is not known exactly what information was allegedly stolen or copied from Facebook’s computer system.
Facebook first filed the suite in June and amended the complaint this month after a court order allowed it to identify who controlled the servers that it alleges were used to attack its site. The social network has requested a jury trial and is seeking damages and an order barring the defendants from accessing its computer systems in the future.
