Lizard Squad ‘claims responsibility’ for Facebook, Instagram outages

Lizard Squad, the hacker group which claimed responsibility for hacking into Malaysia Airlines’ (MAS) website, has indicated that it was also responsible for Tuesday’s worldwide Facebook and Instagram outages.

“Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad,” tweeted the group at 2.36pm (Malaysian time) Tuesday.

On Tuesday afternoon, many Internet users took to Twitter to complain about glitches on Facebook and Instagram resulting after they were were unable to access both sites.

Instagram posted a tweet on Twitter acknowledging the problem.

“We’re aware of an outage affecting Instagram and are working on a fix. Thank you for your patience,” tweeted the photo-sharing service at 2.51pm.

By 3.10pm, Facebook was back online while Instagram was accessible at 3.20pm.

On Monday, MAS’ website was compromised by a group calling themselves the Official Cyber Caliphate.

The “hackers” later identified themselves as Lizard Squad, the group allegedly behind the hacking of Microsoft’s Xbox Live and the Sony's PlayStation Network last year.