Facebook on Monday began restoring access to its platform as well as to Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger after a global outage lasting about six hours shut out many of its 2.7 billion users, left some of the company’s employees idle and prompted a public apology.
"Facebook services coming back online now - may take some time to get to 100 per cent," its chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer said in a tweet. "To every small and large business, family, and individual who depends on us, I'm sorry."
The error-reporting website Downdetector showed the services first stopped working around 11:45am Eastern Time (7:40pm in the UAE). Across the globe, users of Facebook and its sister sites were unable to load content or were greeted with error messages.
Facebook and its affiliated apps began to return online for some users about 5:45pm ET, around six hours after the incident began.
"We've been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now," the company's spokesman, Andy Stone, said in a tweet.
It was one of the longest failures in recent memory. Downdetector, which monitors internet problems, said the Facebook outage is the largest it has seen, with more than 14 million reports worldwide.
The disruption came a day after a whistleblower accused Facebook of repeatedly prioritising profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation.
Several users logging in to third-party apps such as Pokemon Go and Match Mastersusing using their Facebook credentials to were also facing issues.
Facebook staff, who usually communicate using software developed in-house, were reportedly forced to use Zoom and Discord as they scrambled to identify the cause of the problem.
The outage also left staff unable to access buildings and conference rooms at the company's offices after their electronic entry keys stopped working, the New York Times reported, citing an internal memo.
The memo also revealed a team of employees was dispatched to a California data centre to attempt to manually restart the social media company's servers.
"Given the level of back-ups, regional co-location servers, the Facebook FNA node network, their data centre fabric, their neural-network fabric interconnecting data centre and machine learnings applications – this kind of global outage should, in 2021, be inconceivable — or at least lasting minutes," Neil Campling, co-head of Mirabaud Securities' Global Thematic Group, told The National.
Why did Facebook go down?
Facebook blamed a "faulty configuration change" for the issues in a post on Tuesday morning from its vice president of infrastructure.
Posting on Facebook, Santosh Janardhan said sorry for the outage and blamed “configuration changes on the backbone routers that co-ordinate network traffic between our data centres”.
He said: “To all the people and businesses around the world who depend on us, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused by today’s outage across our platforms.
“We’ve been working as hard as we can to restore access and our systems are now back up and running. The underlying cause of this outage also impacted many of the internal tools and systems we use in our day-to-day operations, complicating our attempts to quickly diagnose and resolve the problem.
"Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that co-ordinate network traffic between our data centres caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centres communicate, bringing our services to a halt.”
Facebook outage explained
During the outage, security experts had identified a configuration change as a more likely cause than an outside hack. A massive denial-of-service attack that could overwhelm one of the world's most popular sites would require either co-ordination among powerful criminal groups or a very innovative technique.
Facebook has previously been coy about the causes of its service interruptions, which affect three of the world’s most-used apps.
In 2019, after most of its services were inaccessible for almost 24 hours in the worst disruption it has faced, the company blamed a “server configuration change” for a “cascading series of issues”.
Facebook also experienced widespread outages with its apps in March and July this year.
On Sunday, a whistleblower revealed her identity and accused the company of putting profit over the safety of its users.
Facebook shares suffered their worst day in nearly a year, closing at $326.31 on Monday, down 4.87 per cent for the day amid a broad sell-off of tech stocks.
The revelations have ignited a firestorm for Facebook in Washington as politicians accuse the company of covering up internal research about its negative effects.
Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, said the huge impact of Monday's outage was the "perfect illustration" of the problem with giving one company monopolistic control over much of the world's digital communication.
"Especially in developing nations, where Facebook is the gateway to the internet, and where WhatsApp serves as the primary communication method for hundreds of millions, Facebook's overwhelming power was on full display through its absence," Ms Paul told The National.
The users of dozens of smartphone models will be unable to use WhatsApp from November 1, when the Facebook-owned platform will stop working on phones that run on systems older than Android OS 4.1, Apple’s iOS 10 and KaiOS 2.5.1, according to its FAQ section.
Which smartphones will no longer support WhatsApp after November 1?
Health Valley
Founded in 2002 and set up as a foundation in 2006, Health Valley has been an innovation in healthcare for more than 10 years in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
It serves as a place where companies, businesses, universities, healthcare providers and government agencies can collaborate, offering a platform where they can connect and work together on healthcare innovation.
Its partners work on technological innovation, new forms of diagnostics and other methods to make a difference in healthcare.
Its agency consists of eight people, four innovation managers and office managers, two communication advisers and one director. It gives innovation support to businesses and other parties in its network like a broker, connecting people with the right organisation to help them further
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
UK-EU trade at a glance
EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years
Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products
Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries
Smoother border management with use of e-gates
Cutting red tape on import and export of food
The Bio
Name: Lynn Davison
Profession: History teacher at Al Yasmina Academy, Abu Dhabi
Children: She has one son, Casey, 28
Hometown: Pontefract, West Yorkshire in the UK
Favourite book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Favourite Author: CJ Sansom
Favourite holiday destination: Bali
Favourite food: A Sunday roast
MATCH INFO
Cricket World Cup League Two
Oman, UAE, Namibia
Al Amerat, Muscat
Results
Oman beat UAE by five wickets
UAE beat Namibia by eight runs
Namibia beat Oman by 52 runs
UAE beat Namibia by eight wickets
UAE v Oman - abandoned
Oman v Namibia - abandoned
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
BIGGEST CYBER SECURITY INCIDENTS IN RECENT TIMES
SolarWinds supply chain attack: Came to light in December 2020 but had taken root for several months, compromising major tech companies, governments and its entities
Microsoft Exchange server exploitation: March 2021; attackers used a vulnerability to steal emails
Kaseya attack: July 2021; ransomware hit perpetrated REvil, resulting in severe downtime for more than 1,000 companies
Log4j breach: December 2021; attackers exploited the Java-written code to inflitrate businesses and governments
Russia's Muslim Heartlands
Dominic Rubin, Oxford
The biog
Alwyn Stephen says much of his success is a result of taking an educated chance on business decisions.
His advice to anyone starting out in business is to have no fear as life is about taking on challenges.
“If you have the ambition and dream of something, follow that dream, be positive, determined and set goals.
"Nothing and no-one can stop you from succeeding with the right work application, and a little bit of luck along the way.”
Mr Stephen sells his luxury fragrances at selected perfumeries around the UAE, including the House of Niche Boutique in Al Seef.
He relaxes by spending time with his family at home, and enjoying his wife’s India cooking.
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
If you go
The flights Etihad (www.etihad.com) and Spice Jet (www.spicejet.com) fly direct from Abu Dhabi and Dubai to Pune respectively from Dh1,000 return including taxes. Pune airport is 90 minutes away by road.
The hotels A stay at Atmantan Wellness Resort (www.atmantan.com) costs from Rs24,000 (Dh1,235) per night, including taxes, consultations, meals and a treatment package.
Retail gloom
Online grocer Ocado revealed retail sales fell 5.7 per cen in its first quarter as customers switched back to pre-pandemic shopping patterns.
It was a tough comparison from a year earlier, when the UK was in lockdown, but on a two-year basis its retail division, a joint venture with Marks&Spencer, rose 31.7 per cent over the quarter.
The group added that a 15 per cent drop in customer basket size offset an 11.6. per cent rise in the number of customer transactions.
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Second Test
In Dubai
Pakistan 418-5 (declared)
New Zealand 90 and 131-2 (follow on)
Day 3: New Zealand trail by 197 runs with 8 wickets remaining
