Facebook, Instagram down worldwide for an hour

BANGKOK, January 27 (TNA) - Facebook and Instagram social media networks broke down worldwide for about an hour on Tuesday afternoon, from 1:10pm-2.10pm (Thailand's time), with a hacker group, named Lizard Sqad, implying via Twitter @LizardMafia it was responsible. Users in several areas around the world, including Thailand, could not access Facebook and Instagram through their computers and handheld devices during the period. However, the problem did not happen to those using WhatsApp application that is under the umbrella of Facebook. Fackbook and Instagram users in affected areas posted the access problem via other online channels, including Twitter. The incident coincided with warnings of a big snowstorm hitting New York and several other areas in the northeastern part of the United States and during the period, people facing the snowstorm could not communicate. No one confirmed whether both incidents were related, while the hacker group, Lizard Squad, which hacked into the Malaysia Airlines' website on January 26, made an announcement via Twitter @LizardMafia apparently to imply that it caused the outage of popular social networks, including Facebook and Instagram. More than 1.35 billion people are using Facebook and over 300 million people are doing with Instagram, include 32 million and 2 million Thai users respectively. (TNA)