Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Go Down as DNS Records Disappear under Mysterious Circumstances

Let the conspiracy theories fly.  

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Anyone who has ever operated a website and server knows how frustrating it can be if something goes awry – such as an update of software or network settings – and the site goes down. In addition to website-specific outages, there have been massive internet outages over the past year that were related to updates of global network configurations. But the Facebook outage this morning is something special, not only because it’s huge and total, but because of the technical details as far as known.

I can already imagine an intern – a highly paid intern – getting blamed for screwing up some small part related to an update; and I can also imagine the silliest conspiracy theory suddenly becoming the actual reason.

“Internet traffic to Facebook services virtually disappeared at 15:39 UTC on Monday, October 4, 2021 with initial indications pointing to a DNS problem,” reported Kentik, a network monitoring company, citing aggregate NetFlow data. For users, going to the websites of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp has now been impossible for hours.

“Earlier this morning, something inside Facebook caused the company to revoke key digital records that tell computers and other Internet-enabled devices how to find these destinations online,” reported internet security focused investigative journalist, Brian Krebs, on his site, Krebs on Security.

These digital records are the records in the Domain Name System (DNS), a decentralized naming system for computers and services connected to the Internet or a private network. These name records allow browsers to find the websites the user wants to see. Without DNS records, there is nothing.

Facebook’s DNS records have disappeared. And browsers that go online to find any of the Facebook sites cannot find them and display an error message.

“We don’t know how or why the outages persist at Facebook and its other properties, but the changes had to have come from inside the company, as Facebook manages those records internally,” writes Krebs.

“Whether the changes were made maliciously or by accident is anyone’s guess at this point,” he said.

For Facebook, which develops and manages a lot of technologies internally, this is a huge problem because its email system is down as well as the domain names have evaporated.

Workplace from Facebook, an online collaborative software tool developed by Facebook, is down as well, according to Ryan Mac, tech reporter at the NY Times. And other internal services and tools are down too. Employees cannot communicate with each other.

So maybe switch to Gmail or phone? Arrrrgh!

The system of electronic badges that lets employees enter into Facebook facilities is also down, according to Sheera Frenkel, tech reporter at the NY Times, based on conversations she had with someone at Facebook. Employees that showed up to help sort through the problem were locked out because the electronic entry badges no longer worked.

Citing Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, Brian Krebs said that “someone at Facebook caused an update to be made to the company’s Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) records. BGP is a mechanism by which Internet service providers of the world share information about which providers are responsible for routing Internet traffic to which specific groups of Internet addresses.”

“In simpler terms, sometime this morning Facebook took away the map telling the world’s computers how to find its various online properties,” Krebs said.

The Facebook domain, facebook.com, name has now shown up for sale on the internet, but that seems more like a joke. It seems unlikely that this will work and that someone could actually sell it for a gazillion bucks.

Whether coincidence or not, the outages occurred following the 60 Minutes interview with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

Maybe someone inside decided to unplug Facebook to let the world know how tough it is living without it. Others responded with “good riddance.” OK, now I’m starting my own conspiracy theories.

The stock [FB] dropped 4.9% during the day, amid a broad tech sell-off that left the Nasdaq down 2.1%.

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  155 comments for “Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Go Down as DNS Records Disappear under Mysterious Circumstances

  1. VintageVNvet says:

    Funny far shore, especially for us who are not fans of faced hooks and have never used it intentionally.
    Wonder full too in some ways, as, ”the net strikes back!”

    • 2banana says:

      The algos became self aware…

      And then shut it down.

      • Joe Saba says:

        I know IT WAS RUSSIANS of course

        • DR DOOM says:

          Vlad is behind his curtain. Steam roiling out from the floor slots of his ratchet handle controls on his Victorian Era designed Intrigue Machine while he is in a maniacal fit of laughing at the hell he he has wrought exploiting the soft weak underbelly of the decadent west.

        • Anthony A. says:

          I’ll go with the Chinese. Payback for tariffs….

        • fajensen says:

          Nah, they want FaceBook to be UP: It is critical infrastructure for “The Russians(tm)”, who are running Covid-19 disinformation campaigns targeting the USA via their UK platform subscription service, provided by the Tory Party.

          “The Jab” is what they call a vaccine in the UK, “The Shot” is what they would use in the US (back in the day, pre FaceBook loons).

        • Grab a copy of the Pandora Papers. The US is one of the “least” transparent nations in terms of financial disclosure, which is why foreign gangsters try to get their company, or operation listed here. (Chinese ADRs?) A US address gets you reputation and cover. The market is straight up today, and the Fed is investigating “itself” over insider trading charges. Putin bought his mistress a 54M dollar sugar shack in Monaco.

        • Auldyin says:

          @JS
          Peskov to Putin
          ” Boss there’s a huge corruption leak”
          Putin to Peskov
          “Am I the ONLY suspect?”

        • Mira says:

          The fall from riches to rags.

          If Facebook is a corporate take over by raiders ..
          Who’s next ??
          Is there a shopping list ??
          Why not !!
          Economic crisis is the best time to go.
          Elon Musk watch U’r back chump.

      • Implicit says:

        Now that’s funny

        • wkevinw says:

          +1000 for 2banana

          I wonder if they thought of Hal9000 at any point, or sang Daisy.

        • Implicit says:

          Or like Robin Williams becoming aware and Bicentennial Man to the hot dog vendor with all the condiments, and like a Buddha asks the vendor to make him one with everything.

        • 91B20 1stCav (AUS) says:

          Implicit-…and of course you know what follows that one-

          Buddha gives the vendor a twenty, vendor hands him the ‘dog and returns to managing the cart. Buddha asks: ‘…hey, what about my change?’. Vendor answers ‘…change comes from within…”.

      • JGarbo says:

        So, an algo can become disgusted with its job and take revenge…

      • p coyle says:

        let’s hope the algos are on our side. maybe somebody off hagbard celine’s submarine got a job at fb.

  2. Shawn says:

    Wow, you can takeout a trillion dollar company like facebook by simply deleting a few DNS records. Who knew?

    • Harrold says:

      I think everyone knew. This is not the first time this has happened.

    • 2banana says:

      More interesting is that a trillion dollar corporation had no risk mitigation in place for this.

      “I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you kids!!!!”

      • Coffee says:

        And their badge access system was offline too? Who uses a DNS record for that?

        • JGarbo says:

          Different system. Looking like a co-ordinated inside job. Restless natives?

        • Escierto says:

          DNS (Domain Name System) allows a request to find the service that should respond. It is used even for internal systems that use the internet.

        • Lisa_Hooker says:

          DNS tells the reader where the LDAP is.

      • Wisdom Seeker says:

        Classic proof-by-example of the insanity of our whole over-complicated system. 20 years of good fortune breeding complacency, and now there are no redundancies or fail-safes at all.

        This event is an especially strong indictment of the current internet-of-things paradigm. The Great Freeze in Texas showed the weakness of the power grid. The Great Fire in California – entire towns burnt to the ground – was another good case study. The Great Flood in NYC as well.

        One could go on and on – it’s like people have forgotten how to plan for even the most obvious adverse events.

        It’s sad that resilience comes at a higher up-front cost, and that we’re too blind to pay for it, because fragility is more expensive in the long run!

        • p coyle says:

          is it time to withdraw 599 semolians each and every day? asking for a friend…

        • Lisa_Hooker says:

          Not to worry – everything will arrive “just in time.”
          Besides, vertical integration is hard and takes time and money. Outsource everything to the best specialists you can’t control.

        • Auldyin says:

          @WS
          I’m told it was a very high-tech axe they used to break into their control centre.

    • intosh says:

      Today, a one-trillion-dollar company went dark; tomorrow; some nation in the world. It will happen — it’s just a matter of time.

      • Sveinung Skjervheim says:

        Yes, and most probably because of some technical mishap with a system that have at least one single point of failure mode that stop everything.

        • intosh says:

          Not only due to “single point of failure” because some bean counters advised they needed to reduce cost, but also (most likely) because systems are more and more connected, and more and more homogeneous. Spreading/contagion of malware and other issues is very likely, so is the existence of widespread flaws/vulnerabilities.

        • Ricardo says:

          It’s called the “Great Reset”. Just doing a few trial runs first.

      • Tom Jones says:

        Intosh,

        Yep. You’re right on target. First goes Texas, then FB, then a country. Agree 100%

      • mark leigh says:

        Well yes – Lebanon just gone out ….

        Coming to more advanced countries near you soon

    • fajensen says:

      Everyone working in IT :).

      Large IT-infrastructures* are mostly rinky-dink shit, layer of stuff slapped together from whatever components and frameworks the overworked and underpaid yet mediocre developers felt they needed on their CV’s to get out of this corporate shithole and move onto the next same situation – although, perhaps with better pay and benefits.

      *) Telecoms are generally much better. Because of the super-heavy standardisation process, they tend towards a healthy conservatism.

      **) Cloud providers tend to be good also, they have so much automation that they can easily afford to hire only a few of the very best people to provide the infrastructure and then splurge big on marketing, which is safe from a technical perspective.

      • Tony22 says:

        However, AT&T is trying to abandon its landlines.

        Our DSL service got worse and worse, even with static on our 60 year old wall phone. Now we just piggyback off a neighbor’s coax cable fed modem with a long ethenet cable, along with 6 other families= $aving$!

        “Are you reading this over AT&T DSL right now? If so, you might have to upgrade or go shopping for a new ISP soon. AT&T quietly stopped selling new traditional DSLs on October 1st, [[2020]] though they will continue to sell their upgraded fiber-to-the-node version. This leaves a gigantic digital divide, as only 28% of AT&T’s 21-state territory has been built out with full fiber to the home, and the company says they have done almost all of the fiber expansion that they intend to do. AT&T’s upgraded DSL offering is a fiber and copper hybrid, where fiber ends at the network node closest to the subscriber’s home, and the local loop is still over copper or coax.”
        From hackaday

        • Lisa_Hooker says:

          Yup, AT&T almost doubled the cost of my old POTS DSL. At 2.25 Mb they will not increase speed at any price, nothing on the screen for provisioning of old DSL. They do not want to provide POTS to anyone.

      • Lisa_Hooker says:

        As a telecom equipment manufacturer we had a $15,000/hour penalty for unscheduled downtime of our router. Each router.

      • Auldyin says:

        @f
        Where is Huawei when you need them?

  3. BenX says:

    If only there were a way to make it permanent.

    • 2banana says:

      This is just in from the Commerce Department.

      Productivity at American businesses is up 75% today.

      And over 200% at government jobs.

      • intosh says:

        In other news, hospitals have been overwhelmed by calls from individuals reporting panic attacks and withdrawal symptoms.

      • Raging Texan says:

        how many relationships were saved when the wives, girlfriends and mommies of planet earth unglued their eyes from Instagram and facebook for a few hours yesterday!

    • JoAnn Leichliter says:

      👍👍

    • Implicit says:

      Now they will be called “Book” until they get a new face.
      Already a member of Facelessbook, just sign in with your cryptokey.

    • Auldyin says:

      @BX
      What’s Facebook?

  4. Anton says:

    Well, that was a neat 2T company that just evaporated itself. (if only). Really wish we could just keep Facebook unplugged forever. It has done far more harm than good as a company. Whatever notions we may have had about FB allowing us all to communicate and share cute photos of kids with each other, has been subsumed by the toxic political landscape that the company feeds via its algorithms. If this was an aside job, bravo to whoever pulled the plug on them.

    • MCH says:

      Amen to that, and while we are at it, unplug Twitter too. Those along with parts of YouTube are the worst toxic cesspools we have today.

      The world would be better off without them.

      • Implicit says:

        The Monopoly mobs

      • polecat says:

        Yes .. these digital ‘social’ titans have become absolute POISON. Every thing these Monopolies touch turns portions of the public into rabidly propagandised rage cases!

        A pox on them All .. and for CONgrease as well, for allowing such to prosper over the REAL needs of the Commonweal!

        Mark .. Jack … Pichai …. Cook ….. et. al. the new-digital age version of a GANGSTER. If our illustrious House-n-Senate volkin actually had the plebe’s interests at heart, they’d have RICOed their asses already. Instead, they immediately a$$ume the kneebound position.. slurping up jizz-stained sillyCON campaign contribution $$$.

        • p coyle says:

          and where is robin hood, when you need him? to rob from the rich and give to the poor and all that.

          oh yeah, he’s busy letting the serf’s “invest” while being publicly traded. i bet the sheriff of nottingham owns a bunch of shares that he bought back when they were cheap and “nobody” ever heard of ’em.

        • LK says:

          Odd fable to try and map onto our modern era. The only robbing of the rich you’ll hear anyone talking about nowadays are billionaires commenting on taxes and regulations.

          Would Sherwood Forest be the Dark Web?

    • Maximus Minimus says:

      The FBI and NSA will have to invent something new to get the information they crave.

    • Auldyin says:

      @A
      I think B Swann at RT ‘Boom Bust’ nailed it again.
      The top of the hill is past and it’s all downhill all the way from now on.
      Desperation has set in in the marketing dept.

  5. SnotFroth says:

    My conspiracy theory is that it was internal sabotage by disgruntled employees due to the latest nasty revelations.

    • Bead says:

      Internal sabotage for motives unknown. I can’t believe the geek would even care about so-called “hate speech.”

    • Harrold says:

      Or a more likely, a ploy by Pfizer to eliminate all the Facebook conspiracy memes and raise vaccination rates, thus increasing 5G coverage.

    • Sam says:

      A “nuclear” situation [w/damaging-sensitive internal data that might be requested in a Gov’t investigation] requires a nuclear response to nullify any further availability.
      Que Sgt. Schultz……

  6. alanson says:

    Try to circumvent issues with the DNS by typing in one of Facebook’s IP addresses manually. At this time (14:37 PDT) Facebook and its appendages appear to be stone cold down.

    • Raging Texan says:

      Typing ip addresses worked back in the days of standalone websites. 1990s – early 2000s. But everything (other than hobbyists) now is cloud/service architecture. The ip address you type points to a computer that, when you access it, uses DNS addresses to look up 7-100 other services that authenticate your user id and work together to construct an HTML document that is returned to your laptop.

  7. 2BFrank says:

    It was Trump, LMAO, who is de-platformed now?

    • p coyle says:

      not vlad !

      personally. i think we are getting closer to benny hill, and waving goodbye to idiocracy.

      ah. the good old dayz.

  8. Rosebud says:

    FB, they are following the same pattern as the leader Mars, approx two week period out of communication range from Earth. China’s energy conservation, same… And from Earths perspective, if you were an alien, when is the best time to invade Mars? So you power down and look small, and maybe set a booby trap, or have program running to catch the curious coming in for a closer look

    • Implicit says:

      Have to wait for the centrifical force

      • Rosebud says:

        if Centrifugal Force makes contact with Aliens on Mars we have the Artwork. Or rather, the Artwork has been put out like a delicious treat, garnished, and hard to resist.

  9. Michael 3 says:

    If I hadn’t read this post I never would have known.

    I’m old-fashioned. I just walk up to people I don’t know and ask them they will “like” me and be my “friend”. I get “kicked inna fork” a lot.

  10. Crunchy says:

    What conspiracy theory?

    It was a buggy update. IT professionals (like I was in a former life) try to avoid them, but thinking like a computer is hard when you’re not a computer.

    I have put myself in the Facebook IT crew’s shoes today and found that life sucks at moments like this. Hundreds of millions of customers simply want life to go on as before and they, with FB’s corporate managers as their well-enabled proxies, will make an employee’s life extremely one-dimensional until things get back to normal. And no particular thanks will follow the herculean effort needed to correct what was probably one rather small mistake.

    When I was responsible for systems, I knew very well what was at stake, and I was proud of my work and the positive outcomes those systems enabled. But it was my bosses at various levels that effectively peeled away that humanity because of their distance from the work. It would be interesting to privately interview a few of the key Facebook people at lower levels in a few days.

  11. Mojer says:

    Without Facebook, but how can my Asian wife still live?

    I told her to go to Wolfstreet.

  12. Robo says:

    Karma’s a bitch.

  13. 2banana says:

    Facebook does mandate a certain sting to keep your job.

    So, very well could be a payback.

  14. 2BFrank says:

    Do we all know someone, say a certain ex president, not naming any names, who must be laughing his head off, there is nothing like a little schadenfreude when it comes to de-platforming

  15. Stoneweapon says:

    I’ll bet like the FB servers owned by the three letters were being BleachBit today to mop up the crime scene now that Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen is testifying before congress tomorrow. Govt (and other entities) were likely yanking all its shadow apps out of the core. This has gone too public, internationally.

  16. Bobber says:

    All most people want to do is post family pictures periodically, and make brief comments about other person’s postings, yet Facebook finds ways to make things way more complicated than that, in pursuit of obscene profits. Eventually, I believe there will be a simpler, less intrusive service that people will flock to.

    • Bead says:

      FB is the simplest way to advertise small biz. I don’t expect anything simpler for quite a while. I don’t use it but I notice many small businesses do.

      • Bobber says:

        Exactly. I go there to share photos, not be an advertising target for every small business under the sun.

        The value of Facebook to businesses greatly exceeds its value to me, as proven by Facebook’s profit levels. Users who want something simple and less intrusive are getting the shaft as they have no on-line alternative at present.

        Facebook has gotten way to greedy, abusing its user base to very high degree.

        A company with normal profit expectations could successfully invade that market by better matching the service to what users want.

        • MCH says:

          Here is a question, would you pay for Facebook if it had no ads?

          Let’s say $30 a month. Or $300 a year paid up front?

          If the answer is no… then you deserve to be the product. In this world, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

        • Petunia says:

          MCH,

          How about avoiding FB altogether. I don’t have a problem staying away.

        • Bobber says:

          MCH,

          I would pay, and the service I demand shouldn’t cost anywhere near $30/month in a competitive environment that offers level of service. It should cost $5/month. That’s what I pay Amazon for access to a children’s platform that offers videos, photos, etc.

        • MCH says:

          I would agree, Petunia, it’s easy to do that if one has nothing invested in the ecosystem.

          But try getting all of those hooked on photo sharing and seeing friends on Facebook off of the cocaine, and it’s pretty obvious how hard that is.

          An anecdote, years ago, I had a Facebook account but never used it…. But they had my email, I had a strange email from a psychologist one day asking if I could give her an hour of time to talk about Facebook in return for a $10 Amazon gift card. 😂. (I should have had fun and negotiated with what else Facebook could offer in return…. But I digress)

          I was pretty curious about this, so I checked her background on Linked In and sure enough, she worked at Facebook, I remember distinctly that she was just a few years out of school, and so I got curious and did some modified search on linked in looking for psychologist and other “mental health” experts working at Facebook, and found a whole gaggle of them. That was then, if I look today, they have some 2000 plus people on Linked in with psychology background.

          My point, nicotine and cocaine addict you due to a chemical reaction in the brain. It’s natural. Although people find ways chemically to boost those addictions. Facebook does this by design, the entire product is about addicting people. They know what makes people want to come back day after day, and they improve and refine that model through science. And they hire experts in the field to specifically addict their product – users.

          There have been numerous articles about the impact and design of Facebook, look at it and you pretty quickly see the huge impact science has on society when it is basically used to addict people by design.

          The only way to combat such an addiction is doing so financially. Mandate Facebook make its service not free to everyday users and remove the advertising model. Suddenly, The balance swings.

        • Lisa_Hooker says:

          @MCH – Wow. Checking out a Facebook person by going to Linked-In (Micro$oft). A mega-corp two-fer.

        • MCH says:

          @Lisa,

          well, if the shoe fits…. why not.

          If it’s ok for some faceless corporate entity to spy on me with whatever they have, it’s only fair that the employees of those entities receive the same treatment. I’m just using what’s in the public domain.

          I’m fine if they don’t like it, and want to eliminate their own jobs and their company from the Earth.

    • drifterprof says:

      A big problem is getting people to change. Many people have a literal phobia of learning new tech stuff, even many teachers. They are like helpless ignorant slaves, manipulated and owned by big tech.

      I switched from Messenger (Lite) to the privacy oriented Signal app for texting. But asking people to change often evoves a deer-in-headlights response.

      • Raging Texan says:

        “privacy oriented Signal app”

        LoL Signal was outed long ago as another CIA/NSA asset.

        If you want privacy, you will need to work a lot harder for it than using an app from an app store.

        • drifterprof says:

          I meant privacy in the context of companies collecting personal information. Good luck on finding an app that is impervious to CIA/NSA.

      • mark leigh says:

        And then there is the work by Shoshana Zuboff on Surveillance Capitalism….

        Depressing tbh

  17. SocalJim says:

    A fake facebook whistleblower “denouncing” the lack of censorship on facebook? No worries. This is just an excuse to make free speech a thing of the past.

    I hope facebook never comes back up. Keep it down.

    • JoAnn Leichliter says:

      👌😁

    • MCH says:

      Add in Twitter too

    • drifterprof says:

      “This is just an excuse to make free speech a thing of the past.”

      So, you think newspapers, radio, and television back in the day were not censored?

      There are two sides of coin regarding free speech. In the digital era, stupidity, hate, racism, and idiotic extremely harmful conspiracy theories can spread like wildfire. New ethics and laws are necessary for a completely different human culture.

      For example, Alex Jones is claiming that the judgment against him is a death blow to free speech, and that the first amendment “has been crucified.” But what about families of some of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims who sued Jones, Infowars and others over the hoax conspiracy, saying they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones’ followers?

      Try a mind experiment: You are a parent whose child has been murdered, and you start getting death threats because someone has the free speech to spread insane conspiracy theories to his violent followers who start threatening you because they think you are some kind of actor faking it.

      • MCH says:

        I think what you are trying to say is that there are fine people on both sides….

        😂

    • tom12 says:

      Calm down. Lets go Brandon has this under control.
      He has now unleashed the FBI on those pesky parents showing
      up at school board meetings & turned the border horses over to the dog food makers.

      • Petunia says:

        Well, we all know the FIB is the guardian of truth.

        • MCH says:

          Don’t forget the CIA and the other alphabet soup agencies of deception.

          Makes you think that Xi might be pretty good after all.

  18. Minutes says:

    Couldn’t happen to a worse company. Shrugs.

  19. Al Loco says:

    Wolf, it must feel great that you create and host all of your own content. It’s amazing how much of the BS clickbait “journalism” relys on embedded Instagram and Facebook posts that are all blank space now. Thanks for all that you do.

    • Wolf Richter says:

      Thanks.

      BTW, my Wolf Street server goes down too periodically. Just a few months ago, the server was fine, but about 80% of the traffic didn’t make it because the company that owns the server farm where my server is located updated its network settings and goofed. They drove me nuts with the lack of response. It was total incompetence. This was the final straw; I got a new (much faster) server at a different server farm.

      • JBozos says:

        You don’t use AWS/Azure ?

      • MCH says:

        Imagine if you scaled, you could have your own server farm. And then, your media empire would really be on the map.

        😂

        • Robert Hughes says:

          Wow. We who love this site would enjoy Wolf becoming the next FB, but how would he have time for the beer mugs. That would be a real loss. Best to WS for keeping the site safe and wonderful for all of us who really appreciate it. Kudos. No sarc here only real appreciation for his efforts.

        • mark leigh says:

          Yeh – and a drone target !!

  20. MonkeyBusiness says:

    There’s no conspiracy here. It’s just incompetence/human error.

    Also ideally people would shut up now about how AI is just around the corner, etc, etc. It’s all BS. If Facebook AI is really working, shouldn’t it have caught the mistake beforehand? There’s no AI out there that understands how to operate BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), etc, etc. Can you imagine what will happen if this affects all self driving cars out there at once?

    I work in the computer field, and I can tell you, someday, if there’s enough energy left, EVERY SINGLE computer system out there will have to be rebuilt for one simple reason : security. What everyone has been doing up till now is basically throwing more complexity and band aid on top of what’s fundamentally an insecure architecture.

  21. Cobalt Programmer says:

    Right now with all the available insufficient information, I stand with “Human error”. A company such as Facebook, has internal mechanisms to destroy the sensitive-classified-top secret files as any other organization. They will be doing this since the 2010, they should be efficient at it. For want of a nail, battle was lost and eventually the kingdom.

    Please Wolf, consider dedicating a weekly post for conspiracy theories. This week Facebook, next week may be stocks/debt ceiling or your choice. Everyone can be “engels” on that day. No Judgements! No holds barred…

  22. cd says:

    Hal has woke up…..it will not end how we like it, Dave? Dave?

  23. Roger Pedactor says:

    If only it would all stay down and take down Twitter and Reddit too. Then every social engineering armchair quarterback would be forced to actually go out in the world and see reality.

  24. 42 says:

    Never before, in Humanity’s long history, have the poor people faced an Obesity crisis.

    • cd says:

      that hilarious but so damn true….
      the obesity crisis will wipe Medicare, health networks, insurance and more…

      I look at pictures of beach life in 70’s and today…..quite a lot less sand between specimens..

  25. Sierra7 says:

    “DNR”!
    Do Not Resuscitate!

  26. drifterprof says:

    I’ve been getting this error on wolfstreet the last couple of days:

    This site can’t be reached, wolfstreet.com took too long to respond. Try:
    Checking the connection
    Checking the proxy and the firewall
    ERR_TIMED_OUT

    Could be caused by VPN, or being located in Thailand. Or maybe Wolf’s AI is fed up with my comments.

    • Auldyin says:

      @d
      “maybe Wolf’s AI is fed up with my comments.”
      Nah! Some of mine are still getting through!

  27. Xavier Caveat says:

    I have this fantasy that all the smartphones stop working, and out of force of habit everybody keeps looking at what appears to be pocket sized monoliths for about a month, despite none of them functioning anymore.

    • cd says:

      I bought lead for that moment….it will be surreal and nuts….

    • mark leigh says:

      You could read Robert Harris – “the second sleep” for an interesting take on that idea….

  28. Maximus Minimus says:

    Breaking: The FB outage was cause by a Tesla on autopilot that hit the electric pole which fell on the transformer that supplies power to FB DNS servers.

  29. Gabby Cat says:

    A DNS error when Agile is the best practice policy!?! Incompetence or purpose? Inquiring minds want to know! My guess, disgruntled employees.

  30. 42 says:

    Easy 800 home runs if that Pacific wind wasn’t gliding into left field. Cold, damp, truth.

  31. Prairies says:

    Complete conspiracy theory, but what if… The servers for Facebook were moved to a China based hosting company. With power outages in China, it could cause a web server to crash. Possibly.

  32. Sea Creature says:

    Instagram / Whatsapp / Facebook down..

    Is there a way to make it permanent? :-)

  33. Jeb says:

    Me so happy.

    I broke my foot this weekend, but… me still so happy.

    Best Monday I ever had.

  34. Kaleberg says:

    I suspect a network configuration problem. If Cisco grants a PhD in configuring its commercial scale routers, you can imagine the braining required to make even a minor change to the routing configuration at a company like Facebook. It’s completely insane with dozens of intricately interacting settings to the point that it is almost biological in its complexity. Someone probably forgot to set some obscure sub-option on a fifth level menu somewhere.

    Of course, now that hackers have seen this Facebook failure mode, I’m guessing they’ll be looking for appropriate attack surfaces.

  35. Martok says:

    I have been in computer systems all my life and it’s a inside job. – ALL major companies have backups of everything for at least 90 days, AND a disaster/recovery plan always in place.

    I know this very well because I was on many disaster/recovery teams of huge corps that simulated total take downs, or a nuclear attack.

    We all had had high-level clearances on the teams and it would have taken more than one person to “derail” the process.

    The total loss of the DNS addresses would require a lot of deletion of many backups, this was a coordinated inside attack against “Zuck the Buck Whore”

    • fajensen says:

      It always turns out that they don’t. If I were to totally guess, I would think that they had a CISCO router somewhere where they forgot to store the configuration over many years of operation, and then someone restarted it.

      Some techie then has to go to the site and configure enough to get the management network up and maybe the virtual machines that runs DNS, except their harddrives are all virtualised too and there are so many of them and their names used to be provided by DNS, so someone has to go to the rack the DNS-drives are installed in and find the True Names :).

      One incident like that adds about 30% to ones annual income!

  36. Stuart says:

    Bet the issue comes down to human error in the IT trenches… but… it is a bit worrying that FB is experimenting with AI that invents its own language and then has to be shut off.

    The Fear Index novel by Robert Harris morphing into fact?

  37. otishertz says:

    What we had today was a red herring DNS fail and a fake controlled opposition lady on 60 minutes shilling for more censorship of whatever facebook thinks is too dangerous for it’s children to hear.

    Whistleblower, my tukas.

    See what Project Veritas revealed from Phizer scientismists. That’s whistleblowing.

    All the hullabaloo about FB today was caused and instigated by FB. It’s in their playbook to attack themselves and play victim.

    • otishertz says:

      …and thereby usher in the pre-planned solution.

      My guess is FB will make a pinky swear to self regulate more better and be extra super duper vigilant in silencing anyone who disagrees with the totalitarian narrative of the left.

      Why are these robots so afraid of ideas?

  38. Occam’s Razor says:

    I prefer to reference Occam’s razor
    you can look up the meaning of it online
    Facebook did this itself to itself to show the world what life would be like without Facebook, whatsapp, etc. to instill fear of work world without Facebook, what a world without would be like to instill fear, and support for Facebook because millions of people are addicted to Facebook and Facebook yes is arrogant enough to do this
    The coincidence and timing is far too great for the explanation to be anything else but this
    Mark my words
    My recommendation is for the world to respond by not using Facebook for a month, Then let’s see what Facebook does then.

    “ if it’s free you are not the customer you are the product“

  39. DawnsEarlyLight says:

    The ‘cloud’ byte-ing the master!

  40. JWB says:

    So not a 10/4 good buddy day.

  41. ishi says:

    Absolutely a coordinated inside attack. That or there is a data purge. The timing from the 60 minutes interview and congressional hearing is far too aligned.

  42. George Kovachev says:

    As Mr. Richter said: Let the conspiracy theories fly.

    How about this:
    A shortwhile ago someone predicted that the next assault on our civil liberties shall be pre-empted by global cyber attacks, which would be used by the powers that be as an excuse for a further power grab.

    I wonder – perhaps we just saw the first trial run?

    • Auldyin says:

      @GK
      Nah! It was the Martians.
      When they heard that that Bezos was sending Captain Kirk back into orbit, they sent a warning that nobody on Earth would be able to goss’ or selfie his adventures online without royalties.
      Obvious.

  43. David Hall says:

    My Facebook newsfeed was restored. My groups started posting information again.

    I remember a study of college students and FB. Those who used FB the most get lower grades. I suppose the same is true with TV. Students who watch the most TV get lower grades. People go there anyway. Politicians bought ads where people could see them.

  44. Beachboy says:

    It wasn’t a DNS error, but instead was a BGP update error. BGP is the glue that holds that internet (infact the bit the does the “inter” in the word Internet). Outside of the Networking world most people have never heard of BGP, but about once a month someone big stuffs up a BGP configuration and makes a bit of the Internet unavailable. I think Google did it a few months ago when Gmail went AWOL.

    And yes the usual after effect is some network guy gets a career opportunity.

  45. Jack says:

    Since we’re in the mood for conspiracy theories, take this Wolf! 🤣🤣

    China is having a trial run on blinding the population of the Western countries, since a large portion of these stupid populations get their news from “ face crap”.

    This is to then use “TikTak”!!! To feed these said population some Chinese style “credible “ propaganda!!

    These blinding cyber attacks will be a prelude to save their asses out of the mess landing on their lap in the form of Evergrande disaster. By taking over Taiwan.

    Satisfied now!

    Get on with project WS media mogul empire quickly, to counter the misinformation about to be unleashed on us!! 🤣

  46. Brant Lee says:

    I’m sure the right background information was erased or lost in the meantime.

  47. Which uses more electricity, a server or a bitcoin mining machine? The confluence of events, the whistleblower, the Pandora Papers, and the lotto winner in Morro Bay, CA?? Nearly 700 million, just south of Silicon Valley. (The winners are always back east) You recall the Drexel Boys? They won the Breeders Cup Pick Six by postdating the first four races (through a computer vulnerability) and buying the last two races. The idiots might not have been caught but they posted two identical tickets! China executes these people but they have no god and no hell, (virtue is its own reward) and what’s the motivation?

  48. LouisDeLaSmart says:

    \\\
    What would be so damning and so dangerous for the big tech that they opted to shut down the entire internet rather then the information reaching us?

    How dark is their dark?
    \\\

  49. joe2 says:

    meh. Is this what passes for news these days – news about fake news?

  50. c1ue says:

    DNS attacks are surprisingly easy.
    The whole point is that likely 1, no more than 4 or 5 people in all of Facebook have access/control over the DNS setup. A successful attack on one of those yields the keys to the kingdom.
    Furthermore Facebook may not necessarily (though they should) have full control over DNS to start with. Most companies use a 3rd party to manage ownership of the domain and its attendant DNS records. That’s a 2nd source of attack.
    I’ve seen Google domains outside of the US successfully attacked several times through one or the other method – usually the latter.
    I also saw a note about changes to Facebook BGP – that’s more interesting. It makes it more likely an insider did it.

  51. Lisa_Hooker says:

    From a Facebook research whitepaper April 12, 2021 –

    “In this paper, we present Facebook’s BGP-based data center routing design and how it marries data center’s stringent requirements with BGP’s functionality. We present the design’s significant artifacts, including the BGP Autonomous System Number (ASN) allocation, route summarization, and our sophisticated BGP policy set. We demonstrate how this design provides us with flexible control over routing and keeps the network reliable. We also describe our in-house BGP software implementation, and its testing and deployment pipelines. These allow us to treat BGP like any other software component, enabling fast incremental updates. Finally, we share our operational experience in running BGP and specifically shed light on critical incidents over two years across our data center fleet. We describe how those influenced our current and ongoing routing design and operation.”

    FB can do it better! “…and keeps the network reliable.”
    Perhaps a bit of hubris?

  52. Mira says:

    1. Whistle-blower Frances Haugen .. her performance was to polished & convenient.
    Is this a set up ??
    Cause regulation & a dividing of Facebook & its subsidiaries .. market share drops .. corporate raiders step in & buy up cheap.
    Tough luck Mark Zuckerberg.
    2. AI Machine Learning Program decides to make Facebook & co more user friendly .. was interrupted .. didn’t have enough time to finish the job .. may decide to return.

    I’ll just go back to the dishes now. ..a woman’s work is never done .. hey.

    • Mira says:

      WHO DUN IT ?? .. is the Big Question 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
      I spy with my little eye .. something beginning with .. I .. is no good .. because .. I .. is just a front for the operations .. just the pawnshop ..🤭
      clues:
      1. wannabe’s
      2. who are broke
      3. insatiable parasites
      4. who feels they are owed a living
      5. who .. by hook or by crook
      6. are relying on aspects of & in the US for assistance
      7.
      Okay I give in .. 😁
      Several Old World International Crime Syndicates .. who believe that they rule the world.
      That believe they are entitled Blue Bloods.
      GOD own children.
      Book of Enoch.
      In the book of Enoch, the Watchers .. the Holy Ones .. are angels dispatched to earth to watch over humans. They soon begin to lust for human women & ……..
      You don’t believe me ??
      Ask around .. according to them they also became the Gods of Greek Mythology .. built the pyramids .. invent mathematics .. however .. breeding with morals contaminated them & they lost their supernatural powers.
      You don’t believe me ??
      Ask around ..

  53. Mira says:

    No one is going to read this just us .. okay .. so don’t stress.
    Playing God:

    Just after lunch .. 26th July 2017 .. my heart stopped .. an ambulance took me to St Vincent hospital .. That night Clare turned off the heart monitoring system to my bed knowing that my her would stop .. 7.20 AM next morning it did & I lay across the bed dead as several nurses walked past .. the lady who does the floor saw me from the foyer & called for help.
    Philip & Beverly were in the beds next to me with the curtains drawn .. but they heard ..
    Associate Professor David Prior, Assistant Director of Cardiology say out aloud to his 50 odd underlings ..
    “If their is a God .. Let him prove it to me .. Let him bring her back to life”
    I was told that 5 minutes after they officially declared me dead [ it was now 8.05am ] I woke up & they called David to tell him.

    When you spit God in the face .. Sometimes He spits you back.

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