Tag: Outage | Page 5

Cyber security researcher reacts following the largest social media outage ever | Mobile County Alabama News

October 9, 2021/in Mobile Security

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) — If you use Facebook or any of its apps, you may have been in the dark for a second time this week.

Another outage hit Facebook users early Friday afternoon, but it didn’t last as long as the one Monday that kept users offline for about five hours.

Facebook went on Twitter this afternoon to apologize about today’s problems.

We’re so sorry if you weren’t able to access our products during the last couple of hours. We know how much you depend on us to communicate with one another. We fixed the issue — thanks again for your patience this week.

— Facebook (@Facebook) October 8, 2021

And while it does not appear the outages were due to a hack, the possibility of a hack should be a reminder to us all that the information we share online is vulnerable.

And for some, Monday and Friday’s Facebook outages were more than an inconvenience.

“Some people can use it, and when it goes down can walk away from it,” said Dr. Michael Black. “There are other people that can literally panic about it. Why is it down? Why can’t I see my friends? I can’t communicate. They depend on it to communicate. They depend on it for other daily activities to do things.”

Black, who teaches at the University of South Alabama, also researches cyber security and digital forensics. He says the fallout from the outages could have people rethinking their reliance on social media.

“I think for a lot of people, it might be trust,” Black said. “As far as trusting if the service is going to be available or not. How can I know that it’s going to be there? What’s going to be the availability of it? When I need it, can I get to it?”

That sentiment is shared by Brandon Nero, who uses Facebook heavily as a supply chain manager. But he also worries about the security.

“How safe is the information that I have?” Nero asked. “Which kind of makes me wonder if I should pull back from this being my primary means of communication.”

So, what can you do if you don’t feel confident that your information is staying private?

Experts recommend changing your social media passwords, and on accounts linked to your Facebook page

Also be on the lookout for fake accounts.

Be aware of…

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Chinese teen hacker did not cause Facebook outage

October 8, 2021/in Computer Security

Social media posts claim a global outage that took Facebook offline for more than six hours on October 4 was the work of a Chinese teen hacker. The claim is false. Facebook said the crisis was caused by an internal error, not malicious activity. A photo of a boy shared in the reports shows a 12-year-old who spoke at a Beijing internet security conference in 2014 after hacking his school’s computer system.

“13 Year-Old Sun Jisu Hacked Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram!” reads a Facebook post shared on October 6 on a page with more than 65,000 followers.

“On 4 October 2021, Facebook and ALL of its messaging and social media platforms went down for about six hours, including Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram!”

The post claims that various media outlets, including Reuters news agency, reported that “the failure was due to a 13 year-old Chinese hacker called Sun Jisu.”

Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post taken on October 7, 2021

Facebook went offline for more than six hours on October 4 in a global outage that also hit its other platforms Instagram and WhatsApp.

Similar reports were shared on social media in various languages, including Malay, Arabic, Amharic, French, Spanish and Hausa.

The claim, however, is false.

Facebook’s explanation

A keyword search found no reports by Reuters news agency or any other credible media blaming the Facebook outage on a Chinese hacker.

In a statement on October 4, Facebook said that “there was no malicious activity behind this outage — its root cause was a faulty configuration change on our end.”

In a separate statement on October 5, the social media giant said the outage was “caused not by malicious activity, but an error of our own making”.

Chinese hacker

A reverse image search found the photo of the boy appeared in this article by ECNS, the English-language portal of Chinese News Service, a Chinese state-run news agency, on September 28, 2014.

Screenshot of the ECNS article

The photo’s caption reads: “Wang Zhengyang, the youngest hacker in China, attends and speaks at 2014 China Internet Security Conference in Bejing on Sep.24th, 2014.”

The report said: “Twelve-year-old boy Wang Zhengyang has…

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Hack the Plant Episode 12: ERCOT and the Texas Power Outage

July 7, 2021/in Computer Security

“All types of generation that are part of the ERCOT mix suffered or none of them were at full capacity. All types of generations suffered some sort of outage due to the weather….demand was exceeding the diminished supply. Power plants were tripping offline. There just was not enough supply to meet customer demand.”

Today on Hack the Plan[e]t, Beth Garza, a senior fellow with the Energy & Environmental Policy Team at R St and former director of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, aka ERCOT explains the power outage that crippled the state of Texas back in February during a week of record-cold temperatures. Three severe winter storms and an electricity generation failure left almost 5 million without power, and gave rise to shortage of heat, food and water.

Over the course of her 35-year career in the electric utility industry, Beth Garza has held a variety of leadership roles in generation and transmission planning, system operations, regulatory affairs and market design for both regulated and competitive entities.

In this episode, we discuss how ERCOT manages the flow of electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers – and how the massive power failure happened.

What does this power outage suggest about the resilience of our critical infrastructure? Join us for an in-depth discussion.

(Subscribe to Hack the Plant on Spotify [1] or Apple [2], by RSS feed [3] or search for it wherever you listen to podcasts.)

Transcript:

Joshua Corman:

Our dependence on connected technology is growing faster than our ability to secure it, especially in areas affecting public safety and human life.

Bryson Bort:

I’m Bryson Bort. And this is Hack the Plant. Electricity, finance, transportation, our water supply. We take these critical infrastructure systems for granted, but they’re all becoming increasingly dependent on the internet to function. Every day I ask and look for answers to the questions. Does our connectivity leave us more vulnerable to attacks by our enemies? I’m a senior fellow at the R street Institute and the co-founder of the nonprofit ICS Village, educating people on critical infrastructure security with hands-on examples, not just nerd stuff. I…

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