Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are DOWN

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Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger went down for users around the world for nearly six hours on Monday.

According to DownDetector, the issues started at around 16:44 BST (11:44 ET), with nearly 80,000 reports for WhatsApp and more than 50,000 for Facebook.

NetBlocks, which tracks internet outages and their impact, estimate the outage cost the global economy $160m (£117 million), and sent the Facebook share price down by more than five per cent.

The exact cause of the outage has not been confirmed by Facebook, but one expert said the problem may have been caused by an internal error made by staff.

From around 10.30pm, some users were reporting that they were able to access the four platforms, although Facebook – which owns them all – has not yet announced that the problem has been fully resolved. 

Its staff were said to have rushed to data centers to manually reset parts of the system, although one insider claimed online that the firm’s response was hampered by a lack of staff working in the centers due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

The company’s staff were also said to be unable to get in to their offices today to evaluate the extent of the outage because their security passes were not working. 

John Graham-Cunningham, the chief technology officer of web security firm CloudFlare, said Facebook made a series of updates to its border gateway protocol (BGP) which caused it to ‘disappear’ from the internet. 

The BGP allows for the exchange of routing information on the internet and takes people to the websites they want to access.  

Dane Knecht, senior vice president of the firm, said earlier the Facebook Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routes had been ‘withdrawn from the internet.’ 

Cybersecurity expert, Kevin Beaumont, wrote on Twitter: ‘This one looks like a pretty epic configuration error, Facebook basically don’t exist on the internet right now. Even their authoritative name server ranges have been BGP withdrawn.’   

Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, run on a shared back-end infrastructure, creating a ‘single point of failure’ according to experts.

It wasn’t just the main Facebook apps going down, other services, including Facebook Workplace and the Oculus website were also down. 

Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer, Mike Schroepfer, offered his ‘sincere apologies’ for the outage on Monday afternoon.  

There have been a number of social media outages in recent months, with Instagram going down for 16 hours just last month, and all Facebook platforms going offline in June. 

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey appeared to make light of Facebook’s plight on Monday. Responding to a post which appeared to show how the facebook.com domain is for sale as a result of the outage, he jokingly asked: ‘How much?’ 

 

Users around the world reported problems with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp on Downdetector

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey appeared to make light of Facebook's plight this evening. Responding to a post which appeared to show how the facebook.com domain is for sale as a result of the outage, he jokingly asked: 'How much?'

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey appeared to make light of Facebook’s plight this evening. Responding to a post which appeared to show how the facebook.com domain is for sale as a result of the outage, he jokingly asked: ‘How much?’

A Facebook staff member reportedly accidentally deleted large sections of the code (pictured) which keeps the website online

A Facebook staff member reportedly accidentally deleted large sections of the code (pictured) which keeps the website online

The above Tweet read: 'So, someone deleted large sections of the routing....that doesn't mean Facebook is just down, from the looks of it....that means Facebook is GONE'

The above Tweet read: ‘So, someone deleted large sections of the routing….that doesn’t mean Facebook is just down, from the looks of it….that means Facebook is GONE’

The cause of the outage remains unconfirmed and it’s unclear if all are linked but not long before Facebook’s entities went down, entries for Facebook and Instagram were removed from the Domain Name System (DNS) it uses. 

A DNS is essentially an internet directory. Whenever someone opens a link or an app, their device has to search the DNS used by the service they are trying to access to find it and then connect them to it. 

Major DNS providers are Google, Amazon and CloudFlare. It’s unclear if all of the sites and services that went down on Monday use the same DNS or not. 

A similar outage at cloud company Akamai Technologies Inc took down multiple websites in July.

Cloudflare’s Mr Graham-Cunningham tweeted on Monday that Facebook accidentally ‘disappeared’ from the internet after making a ‘flurry’ of updates to its BGP – Border Gateway Protocol.   

‘Between 15:50 UTC and 15:52 UTC [4.50-4.52pm UK time] Facebook and related properties disappeared from the Internet in a flurry of BGP updates,’ he said.   

When sites go down because of failures in DNS systems, CloudFare tries to repair them. 

Usman Muzaffar, SVP of engineering at CloudFlare, explained to DailyMail.com: ‘Humans access information online through domain names, like facebook.com and DNS converts it into numbers, called an IP address, computers use. 

‘From what we understand of the actual issue —it is a globalized BGP configuration issue. In our experience, these usually are mistakes, not attacks.

‘Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the routing protocol for the Internet. Much like the post office processing mail, BGP picks the most efficient routes for delivering Internet traffic. 

‘Today, the directions for how to get to Facebook’s DNS server’s addresses weren’t available (and seem to still be unavailable). Without being able to contact the DNS servers, visitors trying to reach a Facebook property, like facebook.com, will not get an answer and so the page won’t load.’

According to Reuters news agency, security experts tracking the situation said the outage could have been triggered by a configuration error, which could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.

An outside hack was viewed as less likely. A massive denial-of-service attack that could overwhelm one of the world’s most popular sites, on the other hand, would require either coordination among powerful criminal groups or a very innovative technique.

Shares of Facebook, which has nearly 2 billion daily active users, fell 5.5 per cent in afternoon trading on Monday, inching towards its worst day in nearly a year. 

It means that the company’s founder Mark Zuckerberg – who owns around 14 per cent of the firm – has seen his wealth plummet by nearly $7billion in a matter of hours, Bloomberg reported. 

Some users of UK phone network EE were also reporting that they were having difficulty accessing mobile internet services. However, the firm told MailOnline that there were no problems with the network.

Cyber security specialist Jake Moore said there is a ‘chance’ the issue affecting the firms could be related to a cyber attack.

He said: ‘There have been many reports and I’m struggling to find out exactly what has happened- I’m reading it could be DNS related, which means there is an issue with the connection not knowing where to go to your device.

‘It could well be a human error or a software bug lurking in the shadows but whatever it is Facebook needs to do its best to mitigate the problem of causing more panic about this.

‘The biggest problem is fears over a cyber attack but as we saw from Fastly in the summer I would hedge my bets on that not being the case as we’re talking about one of the biggest companies in the world, but there’s always a chance.’

Apologising on Twitter for the outage, Mr Schroepfer said: *’Sincere* apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook powered services right now. We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible.’

On Twitter, Facebook communications executive, Andy Stone said they were aware some people were having trouble accessing Facebook apps and products.

‘We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,’ the executive said in a tweet.

Soon after the first report came through, the hashtag #facebookdown was trending on Twitter, with users worldwide reporting issues connecting. 

The hashtag #instagramisdown and ‘WhatsApp’ were both also trending on Twitter, with a number of users saying they checked their internet connection when they couldn’t get on Facebook. 

Instagram comms tweeted: ‘Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on it!’

They're some of the most popular social media apps around the world, but it appears that Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have all crashed this afternoon. Above: The reports of Facebook outages reported on DownDetector

They’re some of the most popular social media apps around the world, but it appears that Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have all crashed this afternoon. Above: The reports of Facebook outages reported on DownDetector

Down Detector also showed how problems with Whatsapp began being reported just before 5pm on Monday

Down Detector also showed how problems with Whatsapp began being reported just before 5pm on Monday

Facebook Messenger's outage was also reported on DownDetector at a similar time on Monday

Facebook Messenger’s outage was also reported on DownDetector at a similar time on Monday

In the UK, internet services for users of mobile network EE also appear to be affected

In the UK, internet services for users of mobile network EE also appear to be affected

On Twitter, Facebook communications executive, Andy Stone said they were aware some people were having trouble accessing Facebook apps and products

On Twitter, Facebook communications executive, Andy Stone said they were aware some people were having trouble accessing Facebook apps and products

The various Facebook owned platforms, including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook itself, took to Twitter to explain the issues and say they were working on a solution

The various Facebook owned platforms, including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook itself, took to Twitter to explain the issues and say they were working on a solution

RECENT FACEBOOK OUTAGES 

Last month, a technical issue with Facebook owned Instagram caused an outage that plagued users around the world for 16 hours.

Problems started just after 8am on Thursday. About 18 hours later, at 2am on Friday, Instagram announced the problem had been fixed.

However, the last time Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went down at the same time was in June. 

In June more than a thousand people in countries including the United States, Morocco, Mexico, Bolivia and Brazil reported outages.

There were also two Facebook platform outages in March, with Instagram down on March 30, and all three down on March 19. 

WhatsApp tweeted: ‘We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!’

Even Oculus, the virtual reality gaming platform owned by Facebook was having problems, with one user describing their headset as being ‘like a paperweight’.

Oculus tweeted: ‘We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.’ 

Every time Facebook and Instagram are down, it draws people to Twitter. 

On Monday, one user shared a meme of Homer Simpson jumping from his house to Moe’s bar, with the Twitter logo over the door.

Even Google got in on the action, tweeting: ‘Everyone going to Google to check if Instagram is down.’ 

There were multiple jokes along the same lines, with one showing a fast track race and the caption: ‘Me and my friends running to twitter to see if fb, whatsapp and insta are down.’ 

It is unclear what has caused the issue, although it has disrupted all Facebook owned platforms, including the Oculus Virtual Reality gaming website and Facebook Workplace.

NetBlocks, which tracks internet outages, tweeted: ‘Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are currently experiencing outages in multiple countries.’

Adding that the ‘incident not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.’

When attempting to visit Instagram using a desktop web browser, it gives up a ‘5xx Server Error’ and Facebook simply says ‘this site can’t be reached.’ 

According to DownDetector, the issues started at around 16:44 BST (11:44 ET), and are affecting users globally.

According to DownDetector, the issues started at around 16:44 BST (11:44 ET), and are affecting users globally.

There were multiple jokes along the same lines, with one showing a fast track race and the caption: 'Me and my friends running to twitter to see if fb, whatsapp and insta are down'

There were multiple jokes along the same lines, with one showing a fast track race and the caption: ‘Me and my friends running to twitter to see if fb, whatsapp and insta are down’

Twitter made light of their rivals' problems on Monday by posting a tweet which read: 'hello literally everyone'

Twitter made light of their rivals’ problems on Monday by posting a tweet which read: ‘hello literally everyone’

UK network Vodafone made light of Facebook's plight by joking that they had 'top men' working on the issue

UK network Vodafone made light of Facebook’s plight by joking that they had ‘top men’ working on the issue

The last major outage of Facebook platforms was in June 2021, when people in the US, Morocco, Mexico and Brazil all reported not being able to connect. 

However, there were also problems last month, when Instagram went down for a whopping 16 hours. 

Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET said outages are increasing in volume and are becoming increasingly harder to predict.

He said initially, a major problem with a website or app can point towards a cyber attack – but that can add to confusion and be misleading.

‘With recent issues such as what happened with Fastly [the web service platform that saw a major global outage on June 8] it highlights the power of an undiscovered software bug or even human error,’ Moore explained.

Soon after the first report came through, the hashtag #facebookdown was trending on Twitter, with users worldwide reporting issues connecting

Soon after the first report came through, the hashtag #facebookdown was trending on Twitter, with users worldwide reporting issues connecting

‘Although these are increasing in frequency and require more failsafes in place, predicting these issues is increasingly more difficult as it was never thought possible before. Luckily, most outages only last under an hour.’

This latest outage highlights the major issues with using centralised systems, according to Matthew Hodgson, Co-founder and CEO of Element and Technical Co-founder of Matrix.

‘The ongoing outage of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook (including Facebook Messenger and Facebook Workplace) highlights that global outages are one of the major downsides of a centralised system,’ he said.

Centralised apps, like having a single back end for Facebook products, means putting ‘all the eggs in one basket,’ Hodgson explained.

‘Decentralised systems are far more reliable. There’s no single point of failure so they can withstand significant disruption and still keep people and businesses communicating.’

NetBlocks, which tracks internet outages, tweeted: 'Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are currently experiencing outages in multiple countries'

NetBlocks, which tracks internet outages, tweeted: ‘Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are currently experiencing outages in multiple countries’

They're some of the most popular social media apps around the world, but it appears that Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have all crashed this afternoon

They’re some of the most popular social media apps around the world, but it appears that Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have all crashed this afternoon

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