Facebook, Instagram disruptions 'not caused' by hackers

Facebook, Instagram disruptions 'not caused' by hackers

FRANKFURT - Facebook and its Instagram photo-sharing site suffered outages around the world for up to an hour yesterday, and the company said an internal software networking error was to blame.

The outages appeared to spill over and temporarily slow or block traffic to other major Internet sites, based on Web and mobile user reports worldwide.

Hacker group Lizard Squad, associated with recent high-profile attacks, sought to take credit for the outages, but Facebook denied in a statement that any outside party was responsible.

"This was not the result of a third-party attack...instead (it) occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems," the statement said.

Users in the United States, and many countries in Asia and Europe reported that they were unable to log on to the websites of Facebook, Instagram and corresponding mobile apps, including Facebook and Facebook Messenger, from around 6am GMT (2pm Singapore time). Services were restored within an hour of the outages, users reported.

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