Facebook – Not hackers – to blame for social media outage this morning
By Eric Auchard
The outage at Facebook appeared to spill over and temporarily slow or block traffic to other major Internet sites, according to web and mobile user reports from around the globe.
A hacker group associated with other recent high-profile attacks sought to take credit for the outages, but Facebookdenied in a statement that any outside party was responsible.
"This was not the result of a third-party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems," the Facebook statement said. "Both services are back to 100 percent for everyone."
Users in the United States and many countries in Asia and Europe reported that they were unable to log on to the websites of Facebook, Instagram and corresponding mobile apps including Facebook and Facebook Messenger from around 0600 GMT. Services were restored within an hour of going down, users reported.
During the outages, Facebook users were greeted with the message: "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can."
Earlier:
FRANKFURT, Jan 27 (Reuters) – Internet sites including Facebook, the world's largest social network, Instagram and other popular sites suffered temporary outages on Tuesday and a hacker group associated with other recent high-profile attacks claimed it caused the outages.
A Twitter account that purports to speak for hacker group "Lizard Squad" posted messages suggesting that it was behind an attack the temporarily blocked several major web sites.