Tuesday, October 5, 2021
This October 4 is in history as one of the worst days in the life of Mark Zuckerberg. The same day that the identity of the Facebook employee who had leaked the compromised internal documents for the company was unveiled, the social network based in Menlo Park suffered with WhatsApp and Instagram the worst total fall in their recent history. Many computer experts do not hesitate to blame the failure of a human error. Twitter occupies the refuge to express opinions and complaints, while the six -hour digital black -out and who hit around 3.5 billion users, the head of these applications caused 5,000 million euros to disappear. For the past five days, Facebook has lost 7.74% in Wall Street and more than 13% in the past month.
Why did it happen? The global failure had its origins in the domain systems (DNS)That is, those who translate IP addresses, difficult to remember, to remember domains and that we all use, such as Facebook.com, as well as the SO -driven BGP (acronym for the gateway protocol) one of the systems used in the network to wear the traffic where it is needed as quickly as possible. Two elements that largely form the basis of how the internet works.
«When the routed tables are deleted, it is impossible to reach you. Apps do not know how to find their way to content. A simplified example is that if I want to go from Madrid to Berlin and the roads have been removed, I will not get there, ”explains Rafael Merino, technologist and server management expert. The BGP would be something like the signs that tell you locations to reach the Brandenburg door.” The roads to Facebook and the implementation of the capacity “,” he details.
“Internet is a network of networks and uses large routers with enormous updated lists of the possible routes that can be used to carry a data package from the origin to the destination,” says the expert. The interruption of network traffic on the edge of 17.40 hours to Monday and was restored at night around 11.45 pm, had a domino effect because of the change in the configuration of the trunk routers who coordinates network traffic between the company’s data centers. Facebook accidentally deleted itself. The internet routes of the company (BGP) were removed by error during maintenance, ”explains the Cloudflare CEO, Matthew Prince.
Why did the incidence go like that? «The internal Facebook systems are all in the same place and that is why the diagnosis and solution of the problem was delayed. It not only influenced access from abroad, but also to the internal communication platform of the company, “says Eusebio Nieva, technical director of the Check Point CyberSecurity Company.” To solve it, they had to send a team to their data center and restore a copy of the BGP routes, spread to the rest of the world with the world, “says Merino.
Experts throw that after the event they have “deleted accounts” or sold data as “network infrastructure level”. “The problem had nothing to do with an attack, in the case of a burglary it would have been a different type of failure,” says Nieva. “We throw away an internal offensive and it is very unlikely that this fall has left some new vulnerability,” says Josep Albors, director of research and consciousness of ESET Spain.
Will it happen again? It is a common failure in the network of networks, but that strengthens its size when it touches technological giants. A problem that also focuses on the excessive dependence on internet services worldwide. Last July a ruling caused a decision in the services of the American company in the Akamai cloud interruptions in the service of companies such as Airbnb, PlayStation Network, Steam, ING or BBVA, among other things. More remarkable was the defect in the fast content distribution network, which left thousands of websites of the entire planet in June, including Amazon, Reddit, Chartbeat, Spotify, streaming platforms such as Twitch, or some of the most important digital newspapers worldwide. The supplier explained that the innocent action of a client activated a software error that remained hidden in a computer program and caused the general fall.
These incidents, as well as the fall of the alphabet services (Google, Gmail, YouTube and the Cloud Storage Service) last December emphasized the vulnerability of digital connections and the weakness of the system on which the network is based.
