Amid speculation that a CYBERATTACK caused Meta's mega outage, expert reveals ... trends now
A hacking group has claimed credit for one of its biggest social media outages in years on Tuesday — when millions of accounts went down worldwide on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Threads, and WhatsApp.
The 'hacktivist' group Anonymous claimed it was a cyber attack, but Meta has been tight-lipped on what caused the outage, simply calling it a 'technical issue.'
Meta's loss of service came soon after the AT&T outage that some speculated was caused by malicious hackers, as well as the United Healthcare ransomware attack, which ended when the US's largest health insurer allegedly paid a $22 million ransom to the cybercriminals responsible.
A cybersecurity expert told DailyMail.com that a cyberattack 'cannot be ruled out entirely,' but said it was more likely either human error from someone at Meta, or a technical issue with the company's servers.
Hacktivist group Anonymous seemed to claim responsibility for the outage, but it is common for hackers to falsely claim attacks in order to sow disinformation and bolster their credibility
Meta revealed the massive outage that hit Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and Messenger was caused by 'technical issues' - but has not shared exactly what the 'issues' are
Meta does not have social media accounts that update users of the status of the company's different sites, so many users were left speculating when they got vague error messages.
As is often the case in the wake of a cyberattack, multiple hacker groups rushed to say they were responsible.
Anonymous, for instance, posted an American flag emoji on X, along with the following message: 'A cyber attack is happening right now on all American social platforms.'
The group included a screenshot from the site DownDetector, which tracks user-reported outages for websites.
But just because they claimed responsibility does not make it so.
Cybersecurity experts call this phenomenon 'post-event victim claiming,' and it happened right after the AT&T outage, too.
In that event, multiple different groups claimed responsibility, but experts doubted whether they were truly to blame.
'There is currently nothing but a social post to suggest this was a cyberattack,' Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor for ESET, told DailyMail.com.
'With limited data and tight lips from Meta it would be difficult to speculate although it cannot be ruled out entirely,' he added.
Meta's representatives continue to remain vague.
'Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services,' wrote Meta communications director Andy Stone in a post on X. 'We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.'
DailyMail.com reached out to Meta for comment.
Even Meta employees experienced issues on Tuesday, reporting that they were unable to log into company systems, which led them to wonder
