Down, down Facebook is down. Source: Supplied
EVERY commuter’s nightmare came true today, as Facebook, Instagram and the dating app Tinder all went down at the same time - during peak hour.
Facebook was first noticed to be offline around 5:15pm AEST. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, and Tinder, which relies on Facebook to log in and provide users’ profile information, were both down as well.
Some of Facebook’s servers are located in New York, and initially, it was believed that the blizzard in that area was responsible for the outage.
MORE: Megablizzard looms over New York
Since then, the Lizard Squad - a group responsible for hacking into the Malaysia Airlines website yesterday and taking down Sony’s PlayStation Network and Microsoft’s Xbox Live - has claimed responsiblity for the cyber attacks that took down Facebook’s networks.
The alleged attackers used a method known as a DDOS attack to take the networks down. This involves sending huge amounts of traffic, concentrated to a specific server, until the server can’t take it anymore and crashes. At this stage it appears no data was compromised.
Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad
— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) January 27, 2015 
This image shows how the attack unfolded. Source: Supplied
The image above is a snapshot of internet activity from this afternoon. As you can see, it shows highly concentrated internet traffic coming from Asia and parts of South America, directed towards servers on the west coast of the US, where most of Facebook’s servers are.
Thirsty blokes currently trying to access Tinder. The thirst is very real. pic.twitter.com/zx9oKP7R55
— Dave Cheng (@drearyclocks) January 27, 2015
Twitter stayed up throughout the terrifying ordeal, and plenty of people took the opportunity to voice their displeasure at its competitors.
Yes, FB & Insta are down. No, it's not a police matter. Yes, we're enjoying the break from baby & food pictures. No, we can't arrest anyone.
— QPS Media Unit (@QPSmedia) January 27, 2015 BUT GUYS IF TWITTER WENT DOWN NOW AND I LOST ALL SOCIAL MEDIA I WOULD PROBABLY ACTUALLY DIE #SocialMeltdown2015 pic.twitter.com/7d3Tp5QHol
— Jenna Guillaume (@JennaGuillaume) January 27, 2015 Currently Down: - Facebook - Instagram - Tinder Currently Up: - Google+ - mySpace
— Austin Hunt (@AustinHunt) January 27, 2015 Facebook and Instagram are down. It's the North Koreans, who also have Zuck's wife. Jesse Eisenberg returns in the Social Network: Part II
— Kyle Russell (@kylebrussell) January 27, 2015 OMG WTF FACEBOOK IS DOWN HOW WILL WE READ CASUALLY RACIST COMMENTS NOW
— The NT News (@TheNTNews) January 27, 2015