Concerning the massive Outage which affected its applications around the world, Facebook says it was due to a "server configuration change".
According to the tracking website downdetector.com, the outage lasted for at least 12 hours in most areas of the world. Its data also shows that the biggest impact was in North America and Europe. The problem was acknowledged on Wednesday; however, Facebook did not comment on it for nearly 24 hours before issuing an explanation and apology on Thursday.
It said in a tweet, "Yesterday, as a result of a server configuration change, many people had trouble accessing our apps and services. We've now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We're very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone's patience." It is believed that the outage reached an estimated 2.7 billion people with its core social network, Instagram and messaging applications.
Facebook, on Wednesday, debunked speculations which said, that the problem may have been the result of a denial-of-service attack [a type of cyber-attack which overloads the host of a service with too many requests].
Facebook also had a disruption in September last year, which it said was a result of "networking issues"; and an outage in November, which it said was due to a server problem.
Though Facebook has said this current outage was caused by a "server configuration change"; with these outages occurring, one would think it's being attacked.
