Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram suffer from global blackout | national news

Facebook does not say what caused the outage. The outage started around 11:40 am and was not repaired after more than 6 hours.

“It’s spectacular,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analytics at Kentic Inc, a network surveillance and intelligence company. The last major internet blackout that took many of the world’s largest websites offline in June lasted less than an hour. In this case, the affected content distributor Fastly blamed a software bug caused by a client who changed the settings.

For hours, Facebook’s only public comment was a tweet that acknowledged that “someone is having trouble accessing the Facebook app” and is working to restore access. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri tweeted that it felt like a “snowy day” about the internal failure.

Facebook chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer then tweeted a “heartfelt apology” to everyone affected by the power outage. He blamed the “network problem” and said the team “is working as quickly as possible to debug and restore as quickly as possible.”

As of Monday afternoon, there was no evidence that malicious activity was involved. “There is no indication that this was an attack linked to the outage of Facebook services,” tweeted Matthew Prince, CEO of internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare. According to Prince, the most likely explanation is that Facebook accidentally cut the internet during maintenance.

Facebook did not respond to a message seeking comment on possible malicious attacks or activity.

Many Facebook employees still work remotely, but employees working at the Menlo Park, California campus reportedly had difficulty entering the building because the security badge was unnecessary due to a power outage.

But for many of Facebook’s nearly three billion users, the impact is far more serious: running a business, connecting to an online community, connecting to several other websites, and even ordering food. It shows how much the world has become dependent on Facebook and its properties. ..

And despite the existence of Twitter, Telegram, Signal, TikTok, Snapchat, and a variety of other platforms, there is an easy replacement for social media which has effectively become critical infrastructure over the past 17 years. I have also shown that there is none. The stop came the same day Facebook asked A federal judge said the Federal Trade Commission’s amended antitrust complaint was dismissed because it faced stiff competition with other services.

There are, of course, other services online for posting selfies, staying in touch with fans, and reaching out to elected officials, but you can use Facebook to run your business or stay away. Those who communicate with their friends and family in some places did not find this comforting.

Kendall Ross, owner of a knitting brand called Knit That in Oklahoma City, said he has 32,000 followers on Instagram’s professional page @ id.knit.that. Almost all of his website traffic comes directly from Instagram. He posted a photo of the product about an hour before Instagram was released. He said he tended to sell around two hand-knitted pieces after posting a photo of the product for around $ 300 to $ 400.

“Today’s blackout is financially frustrating,” he said. “It’s also a great realization that social media dominates a big part of my business success. “

The cause of the failure remains unknown. According to Madley, Facebook appears to have removed basic data that tells other parts of the internet how to communicate with the property. This data is part of the Internet domain name system, which is the central component that directs traffic. Without Facebook broadcasting the location to the public Internet, apps and web addresses simply couldn’t find it.

Netblocks, a London-based internet monitoring company, said Facebook’s plans to shore up its platform (announced in 2019) raised concerns about the risks of such a move. According to Netblocks, this centralization “provides the business with a unified view of user Internet usage,” while making the service vulnerable to a single point of failure.

Rachel Tobac, hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security, uses Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram as their primary means of communication. Many people therefore use Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram as their primary means of communication. He indicates that he may be vulnerable.

“They don’t know how to contact the people in their life without it,” she said. “They are vulnerable to social engineering because they are eager to communicate,” said Tobac, who clicked on a malicious link that could reveal personal data in a previous outage. Some people received an email promising to restore their social media account.

Jake Williams, chief technology officer at cybersecurity firm BreachQuest, said fraud cannot be completely ruled out, but outages are likely “operational issues” caused by human error. paddy field.

Stephen Bellobin, computer scientist at Columbia University, said:

Facebook is already in another big slump after Frances Haugen, former Facebook product manager, provided the Wall Street Journal with an internal document revealing the company’s perceptions of the damage caused by the product and the decision. Was about to.Howgen Posted I will be testifying before the Senate subcommittee today on CBS Sunday’s “60 minutes” program.

Haugen also filed an anonymous complaint with federal law enforcement agencies, arguing that Facebook’s own investigation showed it was spreading hate and false information, leading to increased polarization. It also showed the company is aware that Instagram can harm teenage mental health.

The journal’s story, called the “Facebook File,” portrays a growth-driven company with its interests in public goods. Facebook tried to downplay the study. Nick Clegg, the company’s vice president of policy and public relations, wrote to Facebook employees in a note on Friday: “

Meanwhile, Twitter rang a chime on its main account for its services and posted “literally hello everyone” as the platform was inundated with jokes and memes about the Facebook crash. Later as an unconfirmed screenshot, facebook.com Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted: “How much is your address?

May Anderson, AP writer in New York, and Matt O’Brien, AP technology writer in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.