Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) has announced what caused its service and Instagram to go down last night.
According to Facebook, the outage that occurred on Tuesday at 0600 GMT was its fault. The company said that it introduced some changes that affected its configuration systems. However, the problem has been fixed and the two services are back online, reports Reuters.
Lizard Squad, a hacking group, tried to take credit for the Facebook and Instagram outages. The group has been behind several attacks on Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Sony (NYSE:SNE). However, it would be difficult for it to perform a distributed denial of service attack on the social media websites, Reuters notes.
“It is a sign of the nervousness caused by the growing number successful cyberattacks on major online brands that Facebook quickly issued a denial that the incident was a cyberattack,” Alan Woodward, a University of Surrey professor with a focus on computer security, told ZDNet. “It’s better to attempt a cock up by their own staff than blame it on an outside group.”
FB shares were down 1% as of Tuesday afternoon.
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