We witnessed something strange today. While looking out of our office window, we saw a woman across the street carrying a piece of cake in her hand and she was just approaching random people and asking them to look at her cake.
Strangely enough, at the same time we saw a teenager holding a picture of what appeared to be his girlfriend and asking strangers to like it. It was just then that we realized the horror; Facebook and Instragram must be down and that has forced social media addicts to take to the streets to get their daily dose of likes and comments.
Yeah, this just might happen!
Our fears came true when major news outlets started reporting that the Lizard Squad – a nefarious hacking group – has claimed responsibility for hacking Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat, etc., and bringing them to their knees.
Not a literal representation, but we think it fits the purpose
People at Facebook and Instagram were quick to deny any hacking attempts. The official response released read:
"Earlier today many people had trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram. This was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems. We moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100% for everyone.”
Meanwhile, the vast majority of social media users thought the outage meant the end of the world and the entire mankind, which caused them to go into a frenzy of their own.
We assume it was something like this!
Facebook and Instagram both tried to calm people, and that’s when things went back to normal.
Some people, however, took to Twitter to express their “mixed” feelings regarding the outage of social media behemoths.
#facebook & #instagram are down! #facebookdown #instagramdown pic.twitter.com/jJxtQFxbNc
— PureVPN (@purevpn) January 27, 2015
And then there were conspiracy theorist who stepped in to take the stage. But this time around, we sort of agreed to a certain extent to some of the conspiracy theories being presented; the reason being that they sounded somewhat logical.
Yes tin-foil man, it sure is!
Theory # 1: The Charlie Hebdo Connection
Of the many theories, one pointed to an incident in the recent past, and Mark Zuckerberg’s response to the incident and some of his actions following the incident. We are of course referring to the hideous massacre of Charlie Hebdo’s journalists by terrorists.
Some people were of the opinion that the outage might be the result of a nutcase hacker group that sympathizes with the extremists. This theory holds merit since we have already seen many websites being hacked by hackers representing or belonging to many terrorist groups.
Theory # 2: The North Korean Connection
The second theory was that the attack was carried out by North Korean hackers in retaliation of “The Interview” being released by Sony Studios.
As we have already witnessed, the North Korean hackers are capable of hacking into Sony Studios and releasing official documents, so they just might have what it takes to bring the likes of Facebook and Instagram down, too.
Case in Point
But then again…
Virtual World > Real World?
Be it because of a hacking attempt or a genuine glitch in their system, the outage of social media giants serves as a gentle reminder about the fickleness and volatility of the digital world.
Plus, it also goes to show the impact of something virtual on the real world, and the people living in it. Just think about it: one website goes down and chaos ensues. Seems to us like the digital world could act as a trigger to a bomb that is set to detonate and take the entire real world down with it.
By the way, who and why caused this outage of Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, and others? Share your hunches with us in the comments below!
PureVPN
November 24, 2022
4 years ago
