The Wall Street Journal newspaper, citing an official at the internet services company Kentik, said that Facebook made a change Monday to the network's routing information which affected the company's DNS servers.

The newspaper noted that changes made by Facebook made the site's domains unavailable and forced it to disconnect from the internet.

DNS servers translate domain names into IP addresses, making it possible for DNS clients to reach the origin server.

The New York Times newspaper reported that Facebook said that it is 'unlikely' that what happened was caused by cyber attacks.

Also Read: Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram experience outage worldwide

Earlier Monday, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram stopped working around the world, the tracking website Downdetector reported.

According to the website, many users reported that they were having problems using all three apps shortly after 4pm Monday.

A social media user wrote on Twitter “Seems like there is another Facebook family outage. WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook apps are not refreshing.”

Another said “I've tried Whatsapp several times, I thought it's my internet connection.”

Facebook wrote on Twitter "We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

WhatsApp also said on Twitter "We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!"

Instagram tweeted on their official account "Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on it!"

Following the global outage, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth has fallen by nearly USD seven billion in a few hours.

Zuckerberg now ranks fifth on Forbes Real Time Billionaires List.

Also Read: Mark Zuckerberg loses USD seven billion in hours following global outage

Facebook’s shares dropped five percent following the global outage the company is currently experiencing.