Two weeks after hacker group Anonymous threatened to "kill" Facebook for releasing private information of some of their 750 million users to the federal government, the social media monolith has taken to paying hackers to try and break into their system. Worried about the site’s security in the wake of the BART data leaks, the social media monolith has so far compensated individual hackers between $5,000 and $7,000 since the original threat.

Professor of Law at Stanford, Robert Weiss, says “Facebook thinks it can outsmart Anonymous and vice versa.” But Facebook hopes to win this round. Having invested $40,000 in similar efforts, Facebook is now ready to plunk down more capital, working to ensure they’re not Anonymous’ next successful target.

[KTVU]