Facebook Faces Hackers in Court

Now that Facebook has secured Microsoft with a lucrative advertising agreement, there's reason to believe the social networking site is ready to do some serious business. One pesky Canadian company hoping to hack the page recently found out just how serious that business really is.

According to reports, Facebook recently filed a lawsuit against a Canadian company that attempted to hack Facebook's servers. Given the content of the company's page -- it displays explicit adult images -- there's reason to believe the Canadians hoped to splash the social site with a plethora of nudies. It's a case of try and fail, try, try again. Istra Holdings Inc, which trades under the name Slickcash, allegedly sought to crack Facebook's servers over 200,000 times in a desperate ploy to access the personal data of Facebook's many, many users. (Source: techcrunch.com)

Thankfully for Facebook fans, it appears the threat has been snuffed out nicely.

Court documents on the case state that "These requests for information from Facebook generated error messages and were detected as unauthorized attempts to access and harvest proprietary information." In addition, "Each of these requests sought to direct Facebook's computers to send information on other Facebook users back to (the company's Internet Protocol) address." (Source: canoe.ca)

How did Facebook finally nail the bastards?

According to major Canadian newspaper the Toronto Star, Facebook forced cable Internet service provider Rogers Communications to cough up the subscriber information leading to the Slickcash account.

Although there hasn't yet been a specific number determined by Facebook, reports only suggest that the social networking site is seeking over $5,000 in compensation for its troubles. Just how much more than five grand is necessary, no one seems to know.

Regardless, it is evidence that these formerly underground sites are no longer playing ball with hackers.