Pentagon Probes 'Security Threats' Behind Facebook Outage
2 Min Read
The US Department of Defense announces that it is currently investigating the possibility of a security threat behind the outages facing major social media platforms and services.
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Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp fell on Friday, March 19, 2021 (Getty)
The US Department of Defense says it is currently investigating the possibility of there being a security threat behind the outage that impacted the biggest social media platforms all around the world.
"The Biden administration is aware of and is monitoring the ongoing outage of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday. "We are aware, we're monitoring, but I don't have any other updates. I'd point you to the companies for that."
Social media giant Facebook and its acquired WhatsApp and Instagram were affected by a large-scale outage that caused millions to lose access to Facebook's apps and products around the world.
Several reports talked about a large number of complaints within the United States regarding a mobile telecommunication company undergoing an outage, in addition to Amazon and Google experiencing certain problems.
The problem affecting these services is yet to be verified. However, a message on Facebook's page indicates a malfunction in the Domain Name System.
The Domain Name System is what allows email addresses to traffic users to the sites they want to access. A similar outage in a cloud computing company, Akamai Technologies, led to several sites going offline in July.
The outage had many repercussions, for it caused Facebook's stocks to dip. Facebook's stocks lost 5.72% after the outage, dipping to $323.40 after suffering a $19 loss. Facebook is not heading toward its worst daily performance in nearly a year.
