Zuckerberg loses $6 billion after Facebook goes down for 6 hours | TechTree.com

Zuckerberg loses $6 billion after Facebook goes down for 6 hours

Facebook along with its messaging platform WhatsApp and its photo-sharing app Instagram were all hit by a massive outage impacting millions of users worldwide before being restored after more than six hours. Security experts said the disruption could be the result of an insider threat but investigations are going on. Here' an update from Techtree.com on the matter.

 

Because Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were down for about six hours, Facebook’s stock dropped by 4.9% on Monday. He is now behind Bill Gates on the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index. 

The six hour outage was apparently due to DNS routing problems and was the longest outage since 2019 when the social media giant was crippled for around 24 hours.

Facebook was carrying out a routine update that went wrong, erasing the DNS routing information that Facebook needs so that other networks can locate its services.

Several major sites early this year also suffered outages due to DNS issues. Think of DNS like a phonebook or address book for the Internet, which directs your web browser to the website you are looking for. 

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all went down due to a BGP configuration error. Cloudflare defines BGP as, “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.”

The outage was so disruptive that Facebook employees couldn’t access certain office premises like conference rooms and buildings. The outage disabled all internal systems that employees use to work and communicate, forcing them to use their Outlook email accounts. 

Security experts suggest that Facebook’s outage was the consequence of an internal error. 

Jonathan Zittrain, Director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, tweeted the following: ‘Astounding to see that Facebook basically locked its keys in the car.’

Facebook took to Twitter to apologize for the inconvenience: “To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.”


TAGS: Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg

 
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