The prominent social media website stuttered and died at around 11:40 am this morning. Was it a DDoS attack?
Facebook and Instagram went down today at about 11:40 am IST, with both websites and phone apps not responding. Facebook-owned Whatsapp, however, seemed to be immune to the issue.
Connections have since been restored, at about 12:30 pm, but no response yet, from either website, detailing the reason for the blackout. There is, however, one very plausible suspect though.
Lizard Squad. You know, the guys that DDoS'd the Xbox Live and PSN servers in December, and the same guys that took down the Malaysian Airlines website yesterday (Correction: Lizard Squad . They posted a little snippet on Twitter earlier today, shortly after Facebook and Instagram were reported to be down.
And true to claims, all the websites (save for AOL Instant Messenger, which we couldn't confirm) mentioned above were down at the same time. You can check out the proof for yourself here.
https://downdetector.com/status/facebook
https://downdetector.com/status/instagram
https://downdetector.com/status/tinder
https://downdetector.com/status/hipchat
You can also check out the heat map for DDoS attacks today right here.
So why is the Lizard Squad, which calls itself a hacktivist group, now possibly attacking social media websites? Yes, Facebook is a megacorp in the sense, but stifling social media seems to be more of the stuff of "less liberal" groups. Firstly, we'll have to wait for that confirmation from another source, to make sure Lizard Squad isn't just capitalising on someone else's feats (read annoying behaviour).
But in the meantime, here are some of the most hilarious reactions to #FacebookDown that we found on Twitter.
(Correction: Lizard Squad did not leak information from Sony's servers as previously written. The correct information was here all along. Thanks commenters!)
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 "dnaTechLaunch, Facebook, Instagram, hacking, Lizard Squad- Tinder- DDos attack")
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