Nearly 6 hours after the big break that paralyzes the social media network Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, it seems that these were reconnected again, at first in part and now surely in all aspects.
The website monitoring group DoënDetector described it as "the biggest failure of its kind ever seen", with 10.6 million problem reports globally.
Shares of Facebook, which has nearly 2 billion daily active users, fell sharply on Monday. Security experts said the problem could be the result of an internal error, although even sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.
"Facebook essentially locked itself inside its car," Jonathan Zittrain, director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, wrote on Twitter.
Today, Facebook issued a statement confirming that the cause of the outage was a change in the configuration of the basic routers that coordinate network traffic between the company data centers, and this stopped all Facebook services.
Cloudfare, the web infrastructure company that had its problems with the recent outage, has provided a detailed explanation of what happened. They include two things that essentially create and enable the Internet: DNS (Domain Name System) and BGP (Border Gateway Protocol). The Internet is "many networks connected". Lots. To keep things in order, you need something like BGP to show you where to go. DNS is essentially the address system for each web site's location - its IP address - while BGP is the guide that finds the most efficient way to reach that IP address.
Cloudflare explains that Facebook on Monday, in essence, told BGP through a series of updates that those paths to Facebook no longer existed.
Why did Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp also crash?
All Facebook services were affected, not just Facebook. The change covered all of Facebook's internal systems. Reports indicate that staff were locked out of offices and could not access their internal communication platform.
Why did it take so long to fix the problem?
Facebook's internal systems were run from the same site, so it was difficult for employees to diagnose and resolve the issue. Facebook staff reportedly were unable to access its communications platform, the workplace, and they were unable to access their office due to a security switch system that was interrupted.
How did they finally fix it?
Facebook deri më tani nuk ka hyrë në shumë detaje në lidhje me atë që shkoi keq dhe si u rregullua, por kishte raporte të shumta që gjiganti i mediave sociale dërgoi një ekip teknik në serverët e tij në Kaliforni për të rivendosur manualisht serverët ku lindi problemi.
A ishin të dhënat e mia personale në rrezik?
Jo më shumë se kur Facebook është në funksionim.
A nuk është kjo një kohë e dyshimtë që Facebook të 'prishet'?
Po. Facebook nuk po kalon në fazën më të mirë. Javën e kaluar, kompania ndaloi një plan për të lançuar Instagramin për fëmijët, pasi hulumtimet e brendshme të publikuara në mënyrë jozyrtare treguan se kompania ishte në dijeni se aplikacioni mund të ndikonte në shëndetin mendor të vajzave.
On Sunday, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen went public with explosive allegations that Facebook had prioritized growth and profit over public safety.
"The Facebook version that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world," she told 60 Minutes.
