The empire that collapsed .. How did Facebook disappear from the Internet for six hours?
After a sudden interruption of the three most important Facebook-owned applications, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, on October 4, the company's employees tried to enter their offices earlier than their usual arrival time to solve the problem, but surprisingly, the system did not recognize the access badges. In the meantime, users around the world were pouring out their anger on telecommunications companies for the slow internet, especially owners of small businesses that depend on Facebook applications. Some even followed the strategy of closing the router and then opening it several times, until they discovered the truth of the problem through tweets and publications circulating on the two Twitter applications. and telegram. (1)
A few moments, then the tweets began to pour out on Twitter about the failure of Telegram, but Telegram was not the last in the train of collapse, followed by the Discord platform for communication, then players reported that there were shortcomings in the gaming platforms, the entire Internet is under siege, and Twitter was one of the most important areas that Terrified web users flocked to it, eventually causing it to run slowly and even fail to load tweets.
This madness lasted for a few hours, during which Facebook lost 50 billion dollars of its market value in the first two hours only (2), then after the third hour everyone started to panic, especially with the offer of the service bandwidth or what is known as Facebook's "domain" for sale, even the addresses of the “IP” is inaccessible. It was as if someone had “pulled cables” from Facebook’s data centers at once and disconnected them from the Internet, leaving users in anger and bewilderment. This is the first time Facebook has been down for six hours. So what happened?
migratory birds
With Facebook and Instagram down for most of Monday, many social media users migrated to the Twitter platform for their problems, ideas, and jokes. Twitter seemed to be embracing its own moment of light, as the company's main account tweeted, "Hello everyone...literally," and racked up 2.4 million "likes" in just four hours. Other major brands appeared to have realized the marketing reversal in favor of the social media company, with the official McDonald's account replying: "Hey, what can I help you with?", to which Twitter replied: "59.6 million nuggets for my friends," before Netflix tweeted an image From her new hit series "Squid Game", she shows one of the series' contestants called "Twitter" as he survives and saves the life of a contestant named "Everyone".
Missing the distraction of their favorite social media apps, some joked that their productivity skyrocketed on Monday, with BenDeLaCreme, one of the artists, stating, "Instagram and Facebook have to be down every day. I haven't been this productive since 2006." (3)
After the banter, comments emerged from politicians such as Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, about Frances Hogan, a former production manager at Facebook who shared with the Wall Street Journal thousands of documents that revealed Facebook was aware of the many damage its services cause. Senator Markey tweeted, "Facebook is now down, so it's a great time to hear about his wrongdoing from Francis Hogan." But jokes and anxiety weren't the only thing that spread, rumors spread too.
Well, the news of the 13-year-old Chinese hacker who destabilized the Facebook empire spread like wildfire. It seemed like a cyber attack already, all applications were paralyzed at the same time, but it is certain that Facebook's security is not a marginal matter, and it will not be shaken by a child or only a single hacker. But believe it or not, what happened this time was actually caused by one person, if not the one whose picture everyone circulated.
Gateways and protocols
"At 11:39 a.m. ET, a Facebook employee updated the company's BGP logs," Doug Madhuri, director of Kentik, an internet analytics agency, said in a statement. (4)
Mohamed Abdel-Basit, an informatics expert and founder of the cyber security company, Seekurity, told Meydan: "First of all, we must understand a very important term and the main cause of the problem; what is the border gate protocol? So when one person sends a telegram or message to another person, this service is responsible for getting the message across in the fastest and best way.” In the same way, if we apply this example on the Internet, when a person sends data to any other party, the “BGP” is primarily responsible for finding the best and fastest way to deliver this data to the receiving party.
So, is what happened a breach of this protocol, as everyone thought? Abdul Basit Meydan answers in the negative: “This update caused the loss (all or part, we are not sure yet) of the records that tell the whole world that Facebook is on its “IP” address, meaning that if you requested access to Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp, the Internet will not be able to find the "IP" or "DNS" (Domain Name System) addresses of these services."
In simpler terms, after this update in the "BGP" records, he accidentally removed himself and his services completely from the Internet map, and thus from the ISP map, they all do not see him and cannot detect his domain name, and this explains why Facebook did not open When you restart your router several times, your ISP doesn't even see it.
Border Gateway Protocol problems do not occur frequently, that is, they are uncommon, but when they do occur, they are usually not simple. This “technical error” not only caused regular users to not access various Facebook services, but even prevented Facebook employees from communicating internally with each other via Through internal services such as e-mail and so on, and this is because the internal services are based almost on the same domain names and other domains that faced the same problem, according to Abdel Basset.
Abdelbaset explains to Meydan why employees are unable to enter the company’s premises: “The part about telling Facebook employees that they can’t enter the company’s premises is related to the same main problem. The failure also caused the system to fail to recognize the access badge ( access badge). Facebook server rooms are of course closed and access is via the access badge, which is impossible with a problem like that, and this proves that the internal systems themselves were affected by the problem.”
Well, it's all about the same problem, but how can a domain name (www.facebook.com) be offered for sale on the Internet? Is this possible? Abdul Basit adds: "This is normal with the problem of hosting companies and companies specializing in domain services, because they see that the domain is available because, as we mentioned earlier - because of the error that occurred - Facebook removed itself from the entire Internet map and the domain became available."
Abdul Basit adds that the domain is available and anyone can buy it, because it is technically reserved and not reserved at the same time, it is actually reserved for Facebook, but the tools that can identify the domain are not available, and this is because it is not linked to any addresses (IP - DNS Routes) at all, Which led to an online auction to buy this domain, and some might have fallen for the trap.
Monopoly Empire
And because misfortunes do not come alone, it was a busy Monday for Facebook, as the company had to ask the judiciary on the same day to reject a revised antitrust case issued by the US government that seeks to force the social media giant to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. (5) Facebook said in its lawsuit that the FTC failed to provide a “reasonable factual basis for characterizing Facebook as an illegal monopoly,” and the company added that the FTC appeared to have “no basis for its bare claims that Facebook was a monopoly or a monopoly of Basis".
Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia had already ruled in June that the original December 2020 FTC complaint failed to provide evidence that Facebook had a monopoly in the social networking market. (6) But the Federal Trade Commission elaborated at length in a subsequent complaint that Facebook dominates the personal social networking market in the United States with more than 65% of monthly active users since 2012.
“The FTC’s fictional market ignores the competitive reality: Facebook competes aggressively with TikTok, iMessage, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, YouTube, and countless others to help people connect, communicate, or simply entertain,” a Facebook spokesperson said. The FTC cannot credibly claim that Facebook has monopoly power because there is no such power.” (7) Well, if what is happening is not monopoly or at least domination, ask all the merchants and owners of small and medium enterprises who mainly rely on Facebook services to promote and publish their business about what happened with them yesterday to know the size of the losses. Some apologized for delaying orders for a day or two because of what happened On Monday, panic broke out in their hearts.The merchants were not alone, as most people rely on WhatsApp instant messages to communicate with their loved ones, so they got angry and helpless, and then began to resent that one company is controlling their lives in such a despicable way.
Much of the recent criticism of Facebook has focused on the decisions that the company's leaders make - or fail to make - about governing, operating, and making money from its platforms. But another consequence of Facebook's scale is that many people are affected when there are technical vulnerabilities like the one the company says was responsible for Monday's disruption.
In Brussels, the center of the European Union — where many government workers have turned to rival messaging service Signal to communicate amid concerns about Facebook's access — the outage has led to a new round of calls for increased oversight of the biggest tech platforms. Thierry Breton, the European commissioner drafting new technology regulations, said on Twitter: "In the global digital space, everyone can experience lockdown. Europeans deserve better digital resilience through regulation, fair competition, stronger connectivity, and cybersecurity."
It really needs new legislation, every time a case is filed against Facebook for monopolizing or leaking data, the giant company succeeds in evading it easily, because the laws regulating the technology market are sufficiently fluid that prevents the giants from installing under its grip. Now we realize that everyone will suffer in the absence of clear laws to regulate the technology market. As for Facebook, the company seems to be interested only in profit, even at the expense of lives, as stated in the latest leaks published by the Wall Street Journal.
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Sources:
- Sheera Frenkel Tweet
- Facebook lost $50 billion in value today
- Instagram and Facebook should go down everyday
- Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all were unavailable due to a global outage
- Facebook again asks judge to dismiss US lawsuit to force sale of Instagram, WhatsApp
- Facebook hits $1 trillion value after judge rejects antitrust complaints
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