Yesterday, October 4, 2021, the entire world was without access to social networks like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram for just over seven hours. During this time, no one could send or receive text messages, and widespread panic ensued. If you want to know the causes of this outage, its consequences, and Facebook's position on the situation, you've come to the right place!
A look back at the evening marked by the massive outage of the American giant: Facebook
You undoubtedly witnessed the outage affecting Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram yesterday, October 4th . It was indeed a major, unprecedented outage that left everyone who regularly uses these networks unable to communicate with loved ones, sell products, or simply be entertained. Finally, a solution was found, and by midnight, everything was back to normal.
" To the entire community of people and businesses worldwide who rely on our services: we are sincerely sorry. After identifying the issue, we worked hard to restore access to our applications and services, and we are pleased to announce that they are now accessible and fully functional. Thank you for your support and patience ." This message, posted on Twitter, was how the group announced the resolution of the problem!
Although some glitches were observed overnight, a test conducted this morning showed that Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are functioning normally . Nevertheless, the American giant is already facing criticism in the United States, and for many, this global outage is an unpleasant inconvenience. It's worth noting that the outage was difficult to manage because the Facebook team itself was dealing with the issue, trying to communicate, reassure users, and resolve it quickly.
What are the causes of this global outage?
On the evening of Monday, October 4, 2021, when attempting to access Facebook on the web, users encountered messages such as: “ This site can’t be reached ” or “ Unable to find the IP address of the facebook.com server .” The situation has since improved, and the Facebook homepage has gradually returned.
This outage affected a wide range of Facebook-related services, including Messenger , WhatsApp , and Instagram . Even Facebook's virtual reality platform, Oculus 2.7 billion people use Facebook's network of apps daily .
According to Jane Manchun Wong, a reverse engineering , this appears to be a DNS issue, compromising Facebook's entire network of applications. Even employees of Mark Zuckerberg's company lacked access to the services provided by the American giant.
What exactly is this about? A DNS, also known as a Domain Name System, is a kind of directory used to establish a direct link between a server's IP address and its public URL . Generally, resolving such a problem takes a considerable amount of time.
Furthermore, it is possible to place a bid on the Uni Registry website to purchase domain names, including facebook.com, instagram.com, and whatsapp.com. Some believe that one or more malicious individuals forced the purchase (which is very likely). Others, however, suggest a problem related to a hacking or breach .
Notwithstanding all these ideas, it would seem that this is simply a bug that occurred in the Uni Registry related to the inability to connect to the DNS.
You should also know that the disruption to Facebook's services occurred the day after the release of an interview with a former Facebook employee. According to reports, this employee leaked confidential company documents. Last Sunday, Frances Haugen (a former Facebook employee) told CBS News that the company had prioritized " growth over security " for all its users.
These revelations undoubtedly indicated that Facebook would defend itself, but no one could have anticipated a global outage . In response to Frances Hauge's statements, Mark Zuckerberg's company explained that her remarks were misleading, asserting that it was a biased interpretation of the data and that she was overlooking positive research conducted by the company. A clear response, but one that raises some questions, given that the social network has faced numerous criticisms and controversies, including those related to the privacy of all registered users.
Facebook's stance regarding this global outage of its application network
In its statement, Facebook said the bug was caused by minor issues related to a change in the configuration of its systems that coordinate network traffic between its data centers.
" This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on how our data centers communicate, which led to the shutdown of our services ," explains the American giant.
" We believe the primary cause of this bug was due to an incorrect configuration change ," he added.
Facebook says it also claimed the outage affected internal operating systems, " making it difficult for us to quickly diagnose and resolve the issue ."
Finally, the company confirmed that there was no evidence that user data had been leaked.
Did the Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram outage have any consequences?
Because some other services use Facebook as their authentication system , they have side effects that prevent some people from logging in to these associated services. For example, games like Pokémon Go use Facebook login and may not be available to all players. The same is true for networks such as Snapchat , TikTok , and other Facebook-linked apps.
Alternative services are also starting to feel the impact of the influx of new users. Due to the high traffic, Telegram is currently experiencing a significant slowdown.
Netflix page loading speeds have deteriorated. Oculus , another Facebook service, is also experiencing significant server issues, and many users have reported losing access to some games. Hopefully, they will be back online in the coming days.
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