Facebook sues Canadian porn company over alleged hacking

Facebook filed the complaint in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., against Canadian firm SlickCash and several individuals, many of whom were not named.

The social networking site alleged that the defendants violated the "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the California Comprehensive Data Access and Fraud Act  via its alleged hackings.

Facebook, a social networking site that allows users to form groups of mutually accepted "friends" and post media to their homepages, has more than 34 million users.

The suit alleges that SlickCash and several individuals tried to access its servers at least 200,000 times, arguing that the website suffered irreparable harm and more than US$5,000 in damages.

The complaint was filed last week after Facebook was granted a Canadian court order forcing internet service providers Rogers Communications and Look Communications to turn over subscriber information.

Facebook spokeswoman Malorie Lucich said today that her company does not comment on pending litigation.

Contact information for SlickCash officials could not be immediately obtained.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle, a network security vendor, told SCMagazineUS.com that SlickCash, if the allegations are true, could have been trying to drive increased traffic to its website.

“What they're trying to gain is more targeted information to better facilitate their advertising,” he said. “They're certainly not the first porn-related company to allegedly do something of this nature.”

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