Update: Looks the tweets claiming responsibility were just a prank. And Facebook says the issues it experienced this evening were caused bya code push. Sorry about that.
Is Facebook the next target for activist hacker group Anonymous? Depends on who you ask.
The group went on the warpath last week following the takedown of file-sharing site Megaupload, with attacks that targeted the Department of Justice website, the MPAA, the RIAA, and others. Then, a few days ago, the group seemed to post a video on YouTube, claiming that Facebook would be next, with an attack on Jan. 28. However, the AnonOps Twitter account called it a “mass media lie”.
Then, at 5:15pm today, we received several emails at around 5:15pm Pacific saying that Facebook was down, and several TechCrunch members had trouble accessing the site too (others said they haven’t had any problems). The YourAnonNews Twitter account wrote, “cough cough, uh, looks like http://facebook.com is having a slight accessibility problem. #Anonymous”. Strangely, however, the AnonOps account took the opposite stance, writing, “#Facebook.com is NOT under denial of service attack. STOP LYING.”
It seeEither way, Facebook seems to be back up. Or as YourAnonNews put it, “You are now free to play Farmville and Mobwars.”
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...
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