View Full Version : Facebook outage
hollohas
10-04-2021, 15:44
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have been offline most of the day.
Their DNS records were wiped. If that were the only issue, I suspect they would have been back online much quicker.
But reports are now coming out that employees can't access FB offices because their keycards don't work. Which isn't associated with DNS. They have internal system problems too.
Nobody is saying "hack" yet, but it sure seems like a much bigger issue than the DNS human error they reported.
I know there is no love lost between folks here and FB, but this could get interesting. This is happening as a whistleblower is testifying in front of Congress tomorrow. Interesting timing.
Did some hackers finally decide enough is enough? Time will tell. But if it's no back online tomorrow, their stock is going to absolutely crater. They already lost of $50B in value today.
Scanker19
10-04-2021, 15:52
That’s terrible…
Sounds like a possible stock opportunity in the near future TBH. Not that I don't hate facebook.
Very curious on the DNS wiping.
DNS is the real weakness of the entire internet. If a widespread BIND vulnerability ever was identified, the entire internet would pretty much blink out for awhile insofar as name-based browsing is concerned. Or many other possibilities. It's nowhere near as redundant as people would like to believe.
That would have to be a hell of a hack though to get to the keycards. If true, that is suspicious. I have a hard time believing a company like Facebook would leave their access/control server internet connected. That... almost sounds like an insider / deep network pen. Or a long undetected nation state pen to get that far...
Unless they are morons on logical/physical security, which is not entirely impossible, but seems unlikely.
Just reading into it now, also hit all their owned apps - Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.
Sounding slightly less like a hack. More like a cascading, horrible, shitty day for a few people in IT that will have to be job hunting soon.
hollohas
10-04-2021, 16:02
Agreed on the possible stock opportunity soon.
Cloudflare with some more details. FB maybe back up soon? Cloudflare is seeing some activity from FB.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/october-2021-facebook-outage/
hollohas
10-04-2021, 16:02
And worldwide productivity must have skyrocketed today.
BushMasterBoy
10-04-2021, 16:02
Insider hack, top brass@FB wiping incriminating slates? Social media thrives on chaos of J6? DOJ finds nothing due to corruption...
I asked all my friends on that platform and they said everything has been working fine and have no idea what I'm talking about.
Bailey Guns
10-04-2021, 16:18
I couldn't possibly care any less than I do. If neither of the three ever went online again the world would be a better place.
Yeah, Facebook definitely took a massive dump today. I went to check my business page and it was a "no-go". I'm not even sure it's 100% up and running as of yet. After that whistle blower went on 60 minutes, I'm sure they are cleaning slates.
hollohas
10-04-2021, 16:35
I asked all my friends on that platform and they said everything has been working fine and have no idea what I'm talking about.It's back up now unfortunately.
But it was down since before 10am. Which wouldn't have been obvious to anyone who just uses their app. The app still displayed old posts, which anyone who uses it is used to because the algorithms frequently keep old posts at the top. Open app, see same old posts you're used to seeing, nothing out of the ordinary there, close app. In reality, it wasn't algorithms keeping old posts on top, it truly wasn't updating.
However, anyone trying to access the website would have immediately noticed it was down because the site didn't exist.
Not gonna lie, kinda bummed it's back up...
BushMasterBoy
10-04-2021, 16:35
Puts on FB would probably reap handsome profits. Report says $16 drop in price today. To quote Jack Ryan..."I just follow the money"
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/04/facebook-stock-suffers-worst-sell-off-of-year-traders-on-whats-next.html
I couldn't possibly care any less than I do. If neither of the three ever went online again the world would be a better place.
So you definitely care, as you should. I wonder what the world would look like after a full year of no social media.
BladesNBarrels
10-04-2021, 16:55
Looks like FB is down about 5% today and 16% from previous high.
Still up for the previous 52 weeks about 28%
It might be a buying opportunity or a harbinger of rough times ahead.
[Coffee]
Does Facebook have Century Link?
Great-Kazoo
10-04-2021, 17:08
Well for some people FB is still down.
The good news is, like me, porn hub is still up. ;)
Great-Kazoo
10-04-2021, 17:09
I asked all my friends on that platform and they said everything has been working fine and have no idea what I'm talking about.
Sorry, something went wrong.
We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can.
TEAMRICO
10-04-2021, 17:56
87810
That?s terrible?
Sounds like a possible stock opportunity in the near future TBH. Not that I don't hate facebook.
Very curious on the DNS wiping.
DNS is the real weakness of the entire internet. If a widespread BIND vulnerability ever was identified, the entire internet would pretty much blink out for awhile insofar as name-based browsing is concerned. Or many other possibilities. It's nowhere near as redundant as people would like to believe.
That would have to be a hell of a hack though to get to the keycards. If true, that is suspicious. I have a hard time believing a company like Facebook would leave their access/control server internet connected. That... almost sounds like an insider / deep network pen. Or a long undetected nation state pen to get that far...
Unless they are morons on logical/physical security, which is not entirely impossible, but seems unlikely.
I install access controls systems, a lot of them are moving to cloud based management and smart device app integration in addition to or in lieu of using actual keyfobs or card key tokens. The app integration would require an operational web connection between the access control server and the outside world/internet to work. Depending on whether or not Facebook is hosting their own access control server and if they are operating it off the same system that the platform itself is running on then I could see that outage happening.
hollohas
10-04-2021, 18:30
I install access controls systems, a lot of them are moving to cloud based management and smart device app integration in addition to or in lieu of using actual keyfobs or card key tokens. The app integration would require an operational web connection between the access control server and the outside world/internet to work. Depending on whether or not Facebook is hosting their own access control server and if they are operating it off the same system that the platform itself is running on then I could see that outage happening.Yikes. That's concerning. I guess it makes sense, people are installing residential versions too. I'm all for web connected tools. I love them. I have tons around my house, including sensors of all sorts. But none of them responsible for my main security. The web connected door lock is where I draw the line.
HoneyBadger
10-04-2021, 18:34
I enjoy certain aspects of facebook, and I understand the risks associated with using FB. I honestly kind of enjoyed the chaos today [Muaha]
I couldn't possibly care any less than I do. If neither of the three ever went online again the world would be a better place.
Ditto, waste of time.
I seriously care about Facebook marketplace. It generates about 12% ( and changing) of the revenue.
However I really didn't care for Facebook being down. I cross posted 4 -5 website that if someone wanna shop, buyers most likely have used different platform.
Scanker19
10-04-2021, 19:42
What’s a DNS. I need a crayon and construction paper explanation.
hollohas
10-04-2021, 20:29
The yellow pages for the internet. Translates the website you type into your browser into the proper numbers needed to actually 'find' it.
Scanker19
10-04-2021, 20:37
So what would wiping that to either hinder or help them?
I'm not a computer guy, but I think that means when you type Facebook.com(munism) into your computer, it doesn't take you anywhere because the real address (DNS) doesn't exist.
BushMasterBoy
10-04-2021, 21:31
Somebody posted something that didn't sit well with the military industrial complex. So they shut it down. I wonder what the information was? COVID? UFO? China? 25th Amendment?
Funny I tracked VP Harris on AF2 this weekend. She went to Palm Springs CA.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-takes-quick-unexplained-california-trip-reports
HoneyBadger
10-04-2021, 21:36
Somebody posted something that didn't sit well with the military industrial complex. So they shut it down. I wonder what the information was? COVID? UFO? China? 25th Amendment?
Funny I tracked VP Harris on AF2 this weekend. She went to Palm Springs CA.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-takes-quick-unexplained-california-trip-reports
You're suggesting that somebody posted something anti-Military Industrial Complex on Facebook, so "they" (Facebook or the government) shut down the entire site and their other products like Whatsapp and Instagram to... do what?
Great-Kazoo
10-04-2021, 21:48
You're suggesting that somebody posted something anti-Military Industrial Complex on Facebook, so "they" (Facebook or the government) shut down the entire site and their other products like Whatsapp and Instagram to... do what?
Increase the production of cough medicine.
BushMasterBoy
10-04-2021, 21:59
You're suggesting that somebody posted something anti-Military Industrial Complex on Facebook, so "they" (Facebook or the government) shut down the entire site and their other products like Whatsapp and Instagram to... do what?
Delete and block. Just like they do on this very forum. Facebook reported they had to fly engineers into California to manually reset the corporate servers. Might not even be a "somebody" could be a something i.e. an AI. Link below is a fictional novel of an AI that takes over a computer network. Circa 1977...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adolescence_of_P-1
Somebody posted something that didn't sit well with the military industrial complex. So they shut it down. I wonder what the information was? COVID? UFO? China? 25th Amendment?
Funny I tracked VP Harris on AF2 this weekend. She went to Palm Springs CA.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-takes-quick-unexplained-california-trip-reports
[ROFL1]
BushMasterBoy
10-04-2021, 23:52
It is probably just corporate warfare. Twitter was up and running just fine. A war where money is the weapon. I just thought it strange that the VP was on one coast and POTUS on the other. Ed Snowden probably knows exactly what happened. I knew some event was going to happen today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_3JCfR6DcY
I had no idea until I saw the talk about it on the forums. Pretty sure if all the Zberg platforms turned into smoking holes in the ground, I still wouldn't notice.
Did some truth get out since the "fact checkers" were offline today?
They apparently had Border Gateway Protocol "issues".
I'm not a computer guy, but I think that means when you type Facebook.com(munism) into your computer, it doesn't take you anywhere because the real address (DNS) doesn't exist.
Not a bad description.
The best way to describe a high level DNS attack is by going back to the 90's. You want to call a store on the other side of town, but the government has gathered and burned all the phone books. The the phone system still works, the stores # still works, but you'll never be able to call anybody unless you have their phone number memorized. Knowing their name won't help at all.
In an alternate attack, someone has reprinted all the phone books and everybody's real phone number has been removed, and replaced with a fake one. You look up a number in the phone book and call anyone, it goes to either a sex hotline that automatically bills your account, or a Nigerian scammer, every time, even when your kids try to call mawmaw if they don't have her number memorized.
The internet also runs entirely on an equivalent of phone numbers. (IP address). They all look similar to this: 208.157.101.211. Many have seen it before as 192.168.1.1 <--- the most common address of your router/gateway.
DNS is simply the phone book. It is sort of a pyramid hierarchy that shares information from higher-level servers, so there are certain servers, that if successfully attacked, could cascade changes down into a large number of other servers.
Nobody memorizes IP addresses for their favorite websites, most websites break if you try to browse directly by IP anyway (bad programming).
DNS is also one of many ways that a government can, theoretically, control the internet, which may be it's biggest weakness of all.
It sounds like Facebook may have accidentally sent a routing protocol update that essentially said "we don't have servers anymore". This would stop internet traffic from routing to their servers, it functionally acts as if everything has been disconnected.
Ah shit, whoops, we have to fix that fast! Mistakes like this have happened to tons of IT professionals.
Any easy fix for most businesses, but because Facebook so heavily runs everything through Facebook, that also removed their ability to send a quick update that would said "oops, yes we do have servers, ignore that". No, that simple little f-up took everything they had offline, and also took their keycard servers offline so they couldn't get physical access to access what they needed to go fix it either.
It would've been mostly a non-issue for most other businesses, and mistakes like that occasionally happen, but because Facebook so heavily runs everything through it's own cloud/systems/etc. it literally took them many hours to get far enough to do a 60 second fix.
OldFogey
10-05-2021, 11:00
What? There is/was a fakebook outage? Who knew?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/government-secretly-orders-google-track-151000879.html
Unrelated, just didn't want to start a new thread. The secret courts have been using keyword warrants to have google (and other providers) provide anyone that searched for specific keywords, either currently or for past periods of time.
These trigger keywords are presumed to be certain people, addresses, or phone numbers.
https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/obey-20110424-104201.jpg
Aloha_Shooter
10-05-2021, 12:29
Somebody posted something that didn't sit well with the military industrial complex. So they shut it down. I wonder what the information was? COVID? UFO? China? 25th Amendment?
Funny I tracked VP Harris on AF2 this weekend. She went to Palm Springs CA.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-takes-quick-unexplained-california-trip-reports
That's part of her border investigation, right?
BushMasterBoy
10-05-2021, 12:47
In the meantime, the spotlight in Congress right now, is Facebook! Of course it is just a coincidence. You couldn't time it any better!
https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-urges-lawmakers-to-establish-oversight-of-social-network/
theGinsue
10-05-2021, 18:43
Not a bad description.
The best way to describe a high level DNS attack is by going back to the 90's. You want to call a store on the other side of town, but the government has gathered and burned all the phone books. The the phone system still works, the stores # still works, but you'll never be able to call anybody unless you have their phone number memorized. Knowing their name won't help at all.
In an alternate attack, someone has reprinted all the phone books and everybody's real phone number has been removed, and replaced with a fake one. You look up a number in the phone book and call anyone, it goes to either a sex hotline that automatically bills your account, or a Nigerian scammer, every time, even when your kids try to call mawmaw if they don't have her number memorized.
The internet also runs entirely on an equivalent of phone numbers. (IP address). They all look similar to this: 208.157.101.211. Many have seen it before as 192.168.1.1 <--- the most common address of your router/gateway.
DNS is simply the phone book. It is sort of a pyramid hierarchy that shares information from higher-level servers, so there are certain servers, that if successfully attacked, could cascade changes down into a large number of other servers.
Nobody memorizes IP addresses for their favorite websites, most websites break if you try to browse directly by IP anyway (bad programming).
DNS is also one of many ways that a government can, theoretically, control the internet, which may be it's biggest weakness of all.
Through the years I've had to explain DNS to many people, up to and including intermediate level Sys Admins (I know; right?!).
This has got to be the BEST explanation of DNS I've ever come across.
I found this last night and figured I'd share it here: Understanding How Facebook Disappeared from the Internet (https://blog.cloudflare.com/october-2021-facebook-outage/)
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