Facebook down 4 October 2021: what happened?
On the afternoon of Monday, October 4, 2021 Whatsapp, Instagram, Messanger and Facebook crashed for more than 7 hours.
But what is the reason for the down that caused a blockade for 6 billion dollars?
A situation restored Facebook stated that:
"The main cause of this interruption was a change to the misconfiguration" and that " there isno evidence that the user's data was compromised due to the interruption."
The company also apologized and said it was working to understand more about the cause.
Was the down caused by centralization?
In 2019 the internet monitoring company Netblocks collected data covering the performance and availability of the CDN,backend and frontend servers of the IG, FB, Messenger and Whatsappplatforms.
These indicated a possible problem in the backend or database systems within Facebook's internal network, on which all four services are based.
At the time the intention to merge the 4 platforms, raised concerns about the risks of centralization and concentration of social media platforms.
Centralization gives the company a unified view of users' Internet usage habits but also makes services vulnerable to single points of failure.
Especially to DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, generally preceded by increased latency and outages.
Facebook down: is it a cyberattack?
There is currently no evidence that Monday afternoon's down is due to malicious activity.
According to Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare"nothing we're seeing related to the disruption of Facebook's services suggests that it was an attack."
It was also reported that Facebook employees in Menlo Park had trouble entering the buildings because the outage had blocked their security badges.
However, FB has not denied the hypothesis of a cyber attack and the possibility of malicious activities,but has confirmed that the cause is to be found in a human error.
Consequences on FB, IG and Whatsapp users
So many people rely on Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram, and losing access for so long can make them vulnerable to cybercriminals taking advantage of the outage.
During similar past situations, in fact, some users have received phishing emails.
These malware promised to restore their social media account by clicking on a malicious link that exposes their personal data to cyberattack.
The consequences of Instagram, Messenger, Facebook and Whatsapp down have affected over 3 billion users, causing damage to the company of more than 6 billion dollars.
A confirmation of how much the world relies on social media to manage activities, connect with the community and access many other websites.
If you want to know more about cyber attacks and cybersecurity read our article Cybersecurity: why is it important?
