If that failed, it could be in for “a world of hurt” - because it would need to order manual changes at outside data centers, he added. Colombia University computer scientist Steven Bellovin tweeted that he expected Facebook would first try an automated recovery in such a case. “No one else announced these routes,” said Madory.įacebook, Instagram Plan to Pay $1 Billion In Creator IncentivesĬomputer scientists speculated that a bug introduced by a configuration change in Facebook’s routing management system could be to blame. Madory said there was no sign that anyone but Facebook was responsible and discounted the possibility that another major internet player, such as a telecom company, might have inadvertently rewritten major routing tables that affect Facebook.
Jake Williams, chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm BreachQuest, said that while foul play cannot be completely ruled out, chances were good that the outage is “an operational issue” caused by human error. “They’re more susceptible to social engineering because they’re so desperate to communicate.” Tobac said during previous outages, some people have received emails promising to restore their social media account by clicking on a malicious link that can expose their personal data.
“They don’t know how to contact the people in their lives without it,” she said. So many people are reliant on Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram as a primary mode of communication that losing access for so long can make them vulnerable to criminals taking advantage of the outage, said Rachel Tobac, a hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security.
Without Facebook broadcasting its routes on the public internet, apps and web addresses simple could not locate it.įacebook's Giphy Deal Causes Competition Concerns, Says U.K. Such routes are part of the internet’s Domain Name System, a central component of the internet that directs its traffic. Madory said it appears Facebook withdrew “authoritative DNS routes” that let the rest of the internet communicate with its properties.
Facebook’s request Monday that a revised antitrust complaint against it by the Federal Trade Commission be dismissed because it faces vigorous competition from other services seemed to ring a bit hollow. It also showed that, despite the presence of Twitter, Telegram, Signal, TikTok, Snapchat and a bevy of other platforms, nothing can truly replace the social network that has evolved in 17 years into all but critical infrastructure. Regarding the internal failures, Instagram head Adam Mosseri tweeted that it feels like a “snow day.”īut the impact was far worse for multitudes of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users, showing just how much the world has come to rely on it and its properties - to run businesses, connect with communities of affinity, log on to multiple other websites and even to order food. WhatsApp users faced a similar issue twice in January 2019.Facebook Gaming's Top Users Can Now Stream Music Worry-Freeįacebook’s only public comment so far was a tweet in which it acknowledged that “some people are having trouble accessing (the) Facebook app” and that it was working on restoring access. This is not the first time that the messaging app has stopped working. However, a short while later the platform resumed functioning. #whatsappdown soon began to trend on Twitter.ĭ had users from Sri Lanka, Peru, London, New Delhi, New York, Brazi, Netherlands, Germany, Egypt, Colmbia, Kazakhstan, Sweden, Romania, Trinidad & Tobago, Ireland etc reporting the outage. “I’m coming onto Twitter to confirm if whatsapp is truly down #WhatsApp,” wrote another user. “Has anyone Noticed that WhatsApp is down… Or is it just me…” wrote a user on Twitter.Īnother tweeted, “WhatsApp is down even after uninstalling, reinstalling and rebooting my phone.” On various social media including Twitter, users took to post about the problems they were facing with the popular cross-platform messaging application. The reason behind the snag is yet to be announced by the company.
Many of the over 1.5 billion users, both on Android and iOS, were unable to log into the app. Most users (72 per cent) reported issues of connection, sending or receiving messages as well as log-in problems. New Delhi: Messaging app WhatsApp saw an outage in India and across the world in the early hours of Wednesday with thousands of users reporting glitches in the popular end to end encrypted application.Īccording to Down Detector, which monitors and offers real-time status and outage information, users started reporting problems since 1:32 AM.