This wasn’t due to a hack or our new office or Euro 2012 or GIF avatars, as some have speculated today. A 'cascading bug' is a bug with an effect that isn’t confined to a particular software element, but rather its effect “cascades” into other elements as well. One of the characteristics of such a bug is that it can have a significant impact on all users, worldwide, which was the case today. As soon as we discovered it, we took corrective actions, which included rolling back to a previous stable version of Twitter.
Twitter VP of Engineering Mazen Rawashdeh • Formally denying that outside hacking was involved in Thursday's downtime, hours after a hacker group took credit. Instead, they say it was a "cascading bug" that was to blame. So there's that. (thanks @rmhrisk)
