Facebook is the largest social network on the web right now, claiming to have more than 1 billion users. So it is only natural that when Facebook suddenly becomes inaccessible, people start panicking. Apparently, this happened earlier today and the site was down for a full 20 minutes.
The chief cause of concern among the users was the possibility of a hacking attempt. Since Facebook hosts a huge amount of data of the billion+ user base, any successful hacking attempt can result in significant damages.
However, the recent outage doesn’t seem to be a result of a hacking attempt. According to a Facebook spokesperson, “Earlier today, an internal issue in our web infrastructure caused the site to be slow or unavailable for a brief period of time. We resolved the issue quickly, and should now be back to 100 per cent. We apologise for any inconvenience.”
The mention of ‘internal issue’ hints that it was some technical glitch at Facebook’s end and not some external threat that compromised the availability of the website. As soon as Facebook became inaccessible, users took to Twitter to express their frustration and cite their concerns.
Many hinted at the possibility of a hacking attempt because Facebook was a part of the companies that, according to leaked PRISM slides, had been allegedly collaborating with NSA. Anonymous or any hacking group may have attacked the social network as a form of retaliation. But the company has assured that the entire issue was fairly benign and no hacking attempts were made.
Courtesy: AFR
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