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In the early hours of March 6, Meta's Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Messenger platforms experienced severe global outages, affecting the normal use of millions of users. Users have reported that when they try to log in or refresh these platforms, they encounter error prompts or fail to load. Meta's official status page also shows that these platforms are in an "unknown" status and cannot provide services normally.
Cybersecurity firm Cyberint said that three hacking groups, Anonymous Sudan, Skynet, and Godzilla, claimed responsibility for the outage and that they were trying to attack and shut down Meta's services. All three hacking groups have anti-Israel and anti-American preoccupations, and have launched several cyberattacks against these two countries. According to Cyberint, hacking group Anonymous Sudan "showed off" in a Telegram group shortly after the incident and posted a screenshot of Meta's official status page showing outages across multiple platforms.
However, this claim has not been confirmed, and it is also possible that the hacking group is bluffing. Cyberint said it is not certain that the outage was caused by the three hacking groups, or that it could be caused by technical issues with Meta or other reasons. In fact, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone posted on X that the outage was caused by a technical issue that had been resolved within two hours. Stone didn't say what the specific technical issue was, nor did it mention whether it was hacked.
Previously, the three hacking groups had also collaborated to launch cyberattacks on Discord and ChatGPT. In December 2023, they claimed responsibility for breaking the Discord login page, causing users of the platform to be unable to log in properly. In November of the same year, they also claimed responsibility for a data breach of ChatGPT, exploiting a vulnerability in one of the platform's open-source libraries to steal users' chat logs and personal information.
These cyberattacks have raised concerns about hacking groups using AI technology to carry out larger-scale and higher-level attacks. Some IT and cybersecurity experts**, AI language models such as ChatGPT may be used by hackers to generate malicious**, fake information, create phishing emails, etc., thus posing a greater threat to cybersecurity. As a result, they are calling for greater regulation and protection of AI technologies to ensure that the use of AI does not adversely affect cybersecurity.
Information**
1 meta’s facebook and instagram back up after global outage impacts hundreds of thousands of users. abc news
2 facebook and instagram down: meta services hit by widespread outages. the guardian
3 meta is down: skynet and other groups claim to h**e attacked. cyberint10
4 behind the mask of anonymous sudan: an analysis. cyberint
5 cloudflare cyberattack claimed by anonymous sudan. cybernoz
6 cyber attacks on discord, slack with malware, cyber security in 2022. cybertalk
7 chatgpt confirms data breach, raising security concerns. security intelligence
8 the new risks chatgpt poses to cybersecurity. harvard business review
9 it leaders predict chatgpt-enabled cyberattacks are imminent. blackberry