Facebook Inc. denied hackers brought down its website Monday night, saying instead an internal change sparked the outage.
This was not the result of a third-party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems, a company spokesperson said in a statement.
The outage, which started at about 10:10 p.m. last night and lasted for about an hour, affected users outside the United States including in Asia, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Instagram and other social networks linked to Facebook such as the online dating app Tinder were also down Monday night.
A group called Lizard Squad claimed it was responsible for the outage on Twitter.
Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline#LizardSquad
— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) January 27, 2015
A spokesperson for Facebook would not elaborate on what internal change caused the outage.
Users on Monday night flocked to other social networks such as Twitter to gripe and poke fun at the delay.
Facebook AND Instagram are down?! We re going to try not to panic but… pic.twitter.com/HZTp3giLRn
— E! Online (@eonline) January 27, 2015
This isn t the first time the company has experienced a massive outage.
In 2010, Facebook was down for about 2 and a half hours, which was the worst outage the company had in more than four years.
Facebook s shares fell 1.9 percent to $76.023 late this morning. The company is scheduled to announce its fourth quarter and yearly financial results on Wednesday after the market closes.
