Facebook denies cyber attack, glitch caused by engineers

PETALING JAYA: Facebook denied that its site was hacked after users worldwide had difficulties accessing the social network and Instagram on Tuesday, according to a BBC report. 

The report quoted a spokesman as saying that engineers had caused the problem and it was not the result of a third-party attack.  

"Earlier this evening, many people had trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram," the spokesman told BBC. 

"This was not the result of a third-party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems. 

"We moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100% for everyone." 

Lizard Squad, the hacker group which claimed responsibility for hacking into Malaysia Airlines’ (MAS) website, had earlier indicated that it was also responsible for Tuesday’s worldwide Facebook and Instagram outages. 

Internet users took to Twitter to complain about the glitches after they were unable to access both sites. 

By 3.10pm on Tuesday, Facebook was back online while Instagram was accessible at 3.20pm.