Image via Indiatoday.com
Dreaded Islamist group, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, claimed it was behind the Facebook outage, which made the social networking site inaccessible between 9:00AM and 9:30 AM London time, forcing millions of office workers in cities like Tokyo, London, Moscow and Taipei vulnerable to focussing on work without distractions. Consequently, the outage triggered a temporary global GDP spike but induced a simultaneous plunge in Gross Happiness Product, according to the World Bank.
The FB outage was a damp squib, however, in many Indian cities, especially Delhi, as it coincided with yet another power outage. ”Thanks to India’s power grid being what it is, India is immune to such attacks. It’s the West which needs to get more worried if ISIS follows through with its plans of bringing FB down for a whole day,” opined noted strategic affairs analyst, Praveen Ananthswamy.
Claiming credit for the hack job, ISIS posted on its website: “What you saw yesterday was only a trial run. Next we will take Facebook down for an entire day and stress the entire global economy to unprecedented levels of productivity if America does not mend its ways and quit Iraq.”
Following the ISIS post, Washington has ramped up cyber security for Facebook’s servers. Addressing the nation, a steely eyed Obama said, “Yesterday, Facebook was brought down for 30 minutes. Cowards from the ISIS have claimed to be behind the heinous act that constituted a direct attack on the American way of life. To be distracted at work and surreptitiously switch to the FB tab, thereby prolonging work hours and further emasculating traditional patterns of socializing, is now a cornerstone of the modern way of life. We will not let these cowards alter these cherished work related norms. I assure the American people that our forces are on the highest alert and will do everything to defend freedom and liberty. God bless America.”
However, there is internal resistance within ISIS over perpetrating more such FB outages, given that some of its younger members religiously hang out on the social networking site when not fighting. It hasn’t helped either that the ISIS leadership has rather callously directed the younger cadre to hang out on Google + as a stopgap measure.