No idea if it was to cover anything up. We're talking about the network access here and not physical servers with data storage. Would be a different conversation if the network was fine (able to visit the webpage) but all of a sudden peoples' accounts were gone or database errors.

It does put the meter closer towards something facebook did or something that happened specifically at facebook, rather than a higher level DNS outage or network tiering issue.

It was extremely specific and happened way too quickly almost like some one "pulling the plug". But in big companies like facebook you can't just unplug the telephone line and go offline, there is a plethoria of tech to keep these large company networks going. So its definitely an oddity.

Some one either found the perfect vulnerability or some one knew(or inadvertently did) exactly the right combination of things to do to make it happen so quickly. IT experts will be using this as case study on how not do to what just happened and cyber experts will be laughing because they have been talking about threat vectors like this for a long time.

If hackers had the opportunity to delete the DNS records, it would be more likely they would change it to forward to a silly website or a spoof website instead of just deleting the record.