Facebook is the most popular social networking platform in the world. They have well over one billion users around the world. Therefore, it is very big news whenever Facebook goes offline for even a few minutes. Millions of people were not able to log into their Facebook accounts on Wednesday. This led people to start speculating that the problem might be the result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that was caused by hackers. A DDos attack is a way that hackers can effectively shut down a website or make it function very poorly for a limited amount of time. This is done by sending fake traffic to the site that overloads the servers so that the real traffic is not able to access the site during the attack.
Facebook sent out a message on Twitter saying that they are aware that many people are having problems accessing Facebook. They assured people that they are working hard to fix the problem. They also said that the cause of the problem was not a DDoS attack. Instagram and WhatsApp were also rendered inaccessible to their users. This is not surprising because Facebook owns both Instagram and WhatsApp.
Fortune.com reveals that it is unlikely that hackers would ever try to take down Facebook because it would not benefit them in any meaningful way. The data of Facebook’s users is what would be valuable to criminals. However, it would not be possible to access any of this data if Facebook were to be taken offline. Facebook is so large that it is very unlikely that a DDoS attack would be able to take it offline. The larger the site, the larger the DDoS attack it will be able to absorb. Thus, the harder it would be to take the site down or ruin its performance if it is very large.
While criminals trying to make money would have no reason to take Facebook offline, the idea might appeal to foreign governments. Facebook is one of the largest and most valuable companies in the world. It is a symbol of American capitalism at its best. Therefore, other countries that hate the United States might want to target Facebook just because of the chaos they would be able to cause. Countries like China and North Korea are no strangers to hacking American companies. However, they have never attempted to take down a site as big as Facebook.
Dil Bole Oberoi
