Noticed some Facebook downtime? We have. It’s intermittent, but Facebook has some trouble with uptime right now, and a Twitter account representing Anonymous claims responsibility (somewhat obliquely, in order to troll tech bloggers).
In some kind of conflation of Facebook with the government, a puppet representing Anonymous threatened Facebook with an attack in retaliation for SOPA/PIPA (though other Anonymous sources denied involvement). That was scheduled for three days from now. The organization has declared war against Facebook in the past, but Facebook is no ordinary target. It’s the cream of the crop. It’s practically never down. Has Anonymous finally cracked it?
Well, no. Facebook is still working right now, but not reliably. It has completely failed to load in a few of our tests. Thomas Knoll posted a screenshot of the outage on Google+ at 5:17 p.m.. (Update 7:10 p.m.: We’ve confirmed with Facebook that the site issues this afternoon were caused by a code push. That’s all it was.)
Just two days ago, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) drafted a new readiness plan for dealing with attacks from the likes of Anonymous. Maybe President Obama’s “cyber threats” from last night’s State of the Union address are real, after all.
UPDATE 5:45 p.m.: The @YourAnonNews account claims to have called off the attack (again indirectly).
UPDATE 6:37 p.m.: One “official” Anonymous outlet denies responsibility outright.
Now the first one says it trolled us. And it did. But I ask you: Who are the real trolls here? The ones who make stuff up, or the ones who report their made-up stuff as dubious, probably made-up stuff?
See also: How Could Anonymous “Destroy” Facebook?
