Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are working again after a giant blackout: we explain what happened

For more than six hours this Monday, October 4, Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram were down, inaccessible before a return to normal in the night, around midnight. In a statement released late Monday evening, Facebook explained that most of its networks and messaging had been made inaccessible due to a “faulty configuration change” of its servers.

“Our engineering teams have learned that a change in the configuration of the main routers that coordinate traffic between our data centers has caused technical difficulties resulting in all communication being cut off. This interruption of network exchanges has had an impact. cascading over the way our data centers communicate, causing our services to go down, “the group continued.

” We apologize to those affected ”

According to the American company created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, this failure would have caused problems with its internal tools, making its resolution more complex. There is no sign yet that user data may have been compromised.

“People and businesses around the world depend on us to stay connected, we apologize to those who have been affected” detailed the group, which includes several billion people according to cybersecurity experts, heard by Le Parisien. An apology reiterated by Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook post, “Sorry for today’s blackout. I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about most.”