Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp outage could have been due to a hack
Yesterday wasn’t a good day for most Kenyans who love Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, especially those who love to get updated on memes and what their social media contacts (almost tempted to call them friends) are up to. This is because of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp outage that ran from around 4 PM to about 2 AM Kenyan time affected photos downloads where those on WhatsApp were not able to download photos sent through chat or view them on Status Updates, while those on Instagram and Facebook couldn’t view them on their respective News Feed. Many thought that the WhatsApp outage was affecting only them only to realise later that it was a global problem affecting virtually everyone on the planet who uses the social media services. Facebook itself said that they were experiencing some technical difficulties which they were working fast to resolve, and has since been resolved.
We’re aware that some people are having trouble uploading or sending images, videos and other files on our apps. We’re sorry for the trouble and are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. #facebookdown
— Facebook (@facebook) July 3, 2019
The technical difficulties Facebook was experiencing has since been attributed to an error that was triggered during a routine maintenance operation. A similar outage occurred roughly a month ago in which Facebook reported that Facebook had been hacked by an Israeli NSL company. In that hack, hackers were able to remotely install Spyware on smartphones. Hackers installed the Spyware on both and iPhone by exploding a flow in the message apps voice call feature. This could also be install if people couldn’t answer and phone calls would disappear from phones log which was developed by the Israeli NSL Group. The software can turn on the phone’s camera and microphone, read emails and texts and collect location data. With a second outage happening in just under a month, you can’t blame anyone who is tempted to think that it was some nasty hacker who took control of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp servers.
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