Facebook and Instagram experienced downtime on March 5, but they are now starting to come back online. Users had reported issues with Instagram not loading and being logged out of Facebook.
Many people were concerned that their accounts had been hacked, but it seems that this was not the case. So, what actually happened?
Facebook and Instagram are both down.
Facebook and Instagram Down
Issues with Meta’s services, Facebook and Instagram, began around 10:45 am EST, with users reporting inability to access the apps. Attempts to log in to Facebook and Instagram resulted in prompts to log back in. Instagram users on iPhones received error messages like “couldn’t load posts.”
Approximately 500,000 Facebook users reported problems, with a spike in reports shown on Down Detector mid-morning.
Have Facebook And Instagram Been Hacked?
Contrary to fears of hacking, it appears that Facebook and Instagram were not hacked but rather experienced an outage. Jake Moore, a global cybersecurity advisor at ESET, mentioned that while a cyber-attack is highly unlikely, it cannot be entirely ruled out.
Meta, the owner of Facebook, confirmed the issue on X (formerly Twitter) and stated that they were working on resolving it.
In an email update, a Meta spokesperson explained, “Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
Facebook And Instagram Down—The Reaction
With Facebook and Instagram down, many users turned to X (formerly Twitter) for social media engagement. Elon Musk, the owner of X, made a cheeky post noting that their servers were operational for those reading his post.
Concerns about hacking subsided as users realized it was an outage and not a security breach.
Experts Analyse The Meta Outage
Experts from Cisco’s ThousandEyes Internet Intelligence team analyzed the Meta outage to understand what caused the disruption.
According to Thousand Eyes, the outage was likely caused by a backend service issue such as authentication. While Meta’s web servers remained reachable, users encountered errors during login, indicating an issue with backend services.
By around 16:50 UTC, Meta services began recovering, with most users able to access the applications. The incident seemed to be resolved by 18:40 UTC, according to the researchers.
However, some users on March 6 are still unable to access their accounts, particularly due to a two-factor authentication (2FA) problem with SMS codes not working. Meta has been contacted for an update on this issue.
Facebook and Instagram Security
After regaining access to Facebook and Instagram, it is advisable to enhance security measures. Using a password manager like 1Password or Bitwarden can help generate unique and secure passwords. Enabling two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security against potential hacks.
—
Update 03/06 at 03:20 EST. This article was first published on 03/05 at 11:50am EST. Updated to include analysis by the Cisco ThousandEyes team looking at what caused the outage, as well as a press statement from Meta.