Did Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp take themselves down?

[blogslug]

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/10/what-happened-to-facebook-instagram-whatsapp/

Facebook and its sister properties Instagram and WhatsApp are suffering from ongoing, global outages. We don’t yet know why this happened, but the how is clear: Earlier this morning, something inside Facebook caused the company to revoke key digital records that tell computers and other Internet-enabled devices how to find these destinations online.

Doug Madory is director of internet analysis at Kentik, a San Francisco-based network monitoring company. Madory said at approximately 11:39 a.m. ET today (15:39 UTC), someone at Facebook caused an update to be made to the company’s Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) records. BGP is a mechanism by which Internet service providers of the world share information about which providers are responsible for routing Internet traffic to which specific groups of Internet addresses.

In simpler terms, sometime this morning Facebook took away the map telling the world’s computers how to find its various online properties. As a result, when one types Facebook.com into a web browser, the browser has no idea where to find Facebook.com, and so returns an error page.

In addition to stranding billions of users, the Facebook outage also has stranded its employees from communicating with one another using their internal Facebook tools. That’s because Facebook’s email and tools are all managed in house and via the same domains that are now stranded...

[vrguy]

1. Yes, in response to 60min piece.

N/t

[Ocelot II]

2. Maybe there's a saboteur inside the company?

[Peacetrain]

3. Really makes you wonder doesn't it!

Like they are saying...see if you can live without us now.. and sticking their tongues out at everyone..

[FalloutShelter]

4. Another billionaire megalomaniac,

cum four year old, freak out. “Oh… don’t like me world? Well then goodbye cruel world it is. See how you like those apples.”

but maybe not so much.

[milestogo]

5. Sabotage.

[blm]

6. My guess is, Yes.

[dickthegrouch]

7. Facebook faceplanted! :rofl: /nt

[Jirel]

8. It's a cute conspiracy theory, but no.

Look, all kinds of wild theories could actually happen, but Occam almost always wins out.

I'm betting on an internal idiot or saboteur (I'm hoping the latter) coupled with an arrogant corporate disregard for any safeguards outside its own "unbreakable" system.

I am dying to see the post-mortem on this.

[blogslug]

11. I am not suggesting conspiracy

And I don't think Mr. Krebs is either.

I think they made some kind of boneheaded mistake with their BGP update. The took themselves down = They pWnd themselves.

[Beachnutt]

9. I didn't even notice...

quit facebook 9 years ago, don't miss it at all....

[H2Oart]

10. Hmmm

Is it possible that Facebook has taken itself down to clean up its act. Would be interesting if when they come back up, many of the hate groups are gone.

[LiberalFighter]

12. If they did it backfired.

Especially if their employees can't communicate and do their jobs

[Rebl2]

13. I don't use

facebook, but look at Instagram regularly. I like to follow stuff that is non political. Enjoy following people that do needlework, local restaurants, local small businesses etc.