Update: Facebook, Instagram And WhatsApp Go Down Hard In Possible Whistleblower DDoS Backlash
Earlier this morning, we reported on a damning 60 Minutes interview with Frances Haugen, who served as a data scientist and former product manager for Facebook. Haugen resigned after becoming disillusioned with the company’s policies which she felt did more to harm its users than promote a healthy social networking environment.
Although Facebook hasn’t commented on the outages yet, it’s rather curious timing that this outage is coming so soon after the 60 Minutes piece. Rumors allege that the outages are the result of a DDoS attack in response to Haugen’s explosive claims, which are backed by a lengthy paper trail.
What's even more interesting is that it seems to be a DNS (Domain Name System) server/host level attack that has taken out all of Facebook internet properties, apps and services, all of which can't actually resolve when their names are typed in a browser or apps are loaded.
Facebook, however, has provided this official response so far:
Updated 10/4/2021 @ 2:05 pm ET
An anonymous employee source at Facebook tells us that the outage is not just affecting end users trying to access its properties and apps, it's hampering internal work systems at the company too. "It also took down Workplace, which is what we use for all of [our] internal communications," said the source. "So everybody's cut off from work right now, too.... even our VPNs are reporting they can't find the server."
We should also note that other Facebook properties like Oculus.com are also still down.
