Cyber attacks or clusterfudges?

Trading on the NY Stock Exchange was stopped this morning around 11:30 a.m.  for about 2 hours. An internal technical problem was detected and it was learned that other cyber technical problems simultaneously occurred in other areas. Other exchanges were not effected.

Was this a cyber attack or did a bunch of stockbrokers forget to pay the monthly internet fee to Verizon? The matter is being investigated, but one thing for certain is that a glitch like this is not at all typical.

Soon after the outage, the NYSE tweeted that the glitch was internal and not a breach, but the tweet may have actually emanated from ISIS or China, nobody is certain and nobody is taking responsibility for the tweet. Just kidding.

What they tweeted was: "The issue we are experiencing is an internal technical issue and is not the result of a cyber breach. We chose to suspend trading on NYSE to"-- then they ran out over the 140 character limit Twitter allows for each tweet. What they had to add was: "avoid problems arising from our technical issue."

It is believed that the person who tweeted the first part of the tweet is the same person who is the IT responsible for maintaining the NYSE.  

Other computer glitches that coincided with this one included United Airlines flights. They had to ground their jets when computers told the pilots to fly into large buildings in major cities. Another glitch occurred with the Wall Street Journal after a reporter was about to email an exclusive "gotcha" interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson (pronounced "Jay" but spelling was never a strong point in the Johnson family) said of the curious simultaneous occurrences, "It appears from what we know at this stage that the malfunctions at United and at the stock exchange were not the  result of any nefarious actor. We know less about the Wall Street Journal at this point except that their system is back up again as is the United Airline system."

He too ran out of tweet characters but wisely did it in two tweets.


Marie Harf tweeted: "Hey Jeh, what's nefarious?"

President Obama has been briefed by the NYSE and he blamed the problem on George W. Bush for not regulating NYSE more ambitiously.

The FBI has offered its help regarding the NYSE problem but they agree with Jeh Johnson that the situation does not appear to be nafarious. 

Marie Harf had not comment.



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