Experts say it's 'theoretically possible' the Facebook outage was connected to a whistleblower's bombshell claims against the company - but not likely

Frances Haugen, a Facebook whistleblower, testifies before Matt McClain Pil/Getty Images
The firm experienced widespread outage hours after a Facebook interview with a whistleblower was broadcast.

Insider was told by experts that the two events are not connected and were merely coincidental.

They also stated that it was "theoretically feasible" and hackers could have attempted to attack to "make an argument."

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Facebook and its app carousel were hit hard Monday by a six-hour outage. This was a highly publicized event for the company.

After leaking internal documents, Frances Haugen, a former employee of Facebook, spoke out on CBS' "60 Minutes," revealing how she believed that the company prioritized profit over safety for its users.

Insider was told by experts that it is unlikely that the two events are related, but it doesn't rule out that it could be.

Purandar Das is the president and co-founder at the data security firm Sotero. However, if this were true, the attackers would have already claimed responsibility.

Das stated, "I would lean towards coincidence angle." Keep in mind that Facebook has been hacked already and has lost millions user records. The attackers won't stop and we will soon find out if this was an attack.

Das stated that hackers could also "even look to exfiltrate documents and communications within the company to publicly embarrass it."

Ryan Lloyd, a security specialist at GuardSquare's mobile app security firm GuardSquare, said that while it is possible that someone might have intentionally caused disruptions, it is difficult to know for sure.

Lloyd stated that "This could very easily have been an accident that was caused by some intentional work, and the DNS configurations in question here were collateral damages of some other initiative." "But, it's difficult to know the truth without being inside and seeing what's happening."

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Facebook, its WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger services, as well as scores if employees, were unable to access company internal servers or communications systems on Monday.

Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, compared the situation to a snow day for employees who couldn't do any work.

Santosh Janardhan (Vice President of Infrastructure at Facebook) stated Tuesday that the outage was an "error of our own making". He blamed routine maintenance for taking the servers offline. He said that the outage wasn't caused by malicious activity.

Haugen, who testified before Congress Tuesday regarding Facebook documents she revealed, claimed that regulators are required to take action against the company.

Haugen stated that she does not know the reason for the service's downfall. She said that Facebook was not used for "deepening divides, destabilizing democracies, or making young girls and women feel terrible about their bodies" for longer than five hours.

She said that it also meant that millions of small businesses were not able to reach potential clients and that countless photos of newborn babies weren't joyfully celebrated by loved ones around the globe.

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