New change, not third party attack caused Facebook, Instagram to go offline

It was not the result of a third party attack but a change that affected Facebook and Instagram's configuration systems, resulting in both the social networking websites being taken offline on Tuesday, according to a spokesperson.

A Facebook spokesperson revealed that both the social networking websites were offline on Tuesday because they introduced a change that affected their configuration systems, and claimed that it was not the result of a third party attack.

Hacking group Lizard Squad had originally hinted that it might have been responsible for the same. However, ending all such doubts, Facebook's spokesperson added that the site's engineers moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100 percent for everyone, The Verge reported.

Tinder also reported being downtime on Tuesday, sending a tweet earlier on the day saying that everybody panic, '#Blizzard? North Korea? #TindernetApocalypse'.

The site said that it had recovered an hour later, reassuring users that their matches are not gone, requesting them to just logout and log back in.

Work messaging client Hipchat was also affected and claims that it is still working on restoring its services.

Hacking group Lizard Squad, who previously claimed responsibility for the attacks on Xbox Live and the PlayStation network over Christmas, suggested that they might have had a hand in these recent outages, the report added.