Simultaneous computer system failure in U.S. stock market, airlines and media

On Wednesday (local time), the computer system on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Wall Street in Manhattan, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and United Airlines, the largest airliner in the U.S., stopped due to consecutive technical failures. This stopped the exchange of stocks from 11:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. The website of WSJ stopped few minutes after the technical hiccup in NYSE and recovered two hours later. American media reported that computer errors took place at a reservation system of the United Airlines at around 9:00 a.m. inflicting direct and indirect damage to some 0.4 million passengers and a total of 4,900 flights.

“`At this point there is no indication of malicious actions,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. Testifying before the Senate Intelligence committee, FBI Director James Comey said, “In my business, you don’t love coincidences but it does appear that there is not a cyber intrusion involved” when he was questioned by Barbara Mikulski who said “the series of incident doesn’t seem to be a coincidence.”

Hacker-related media, however, say that “there is a possibility that the tech failure in the NYSE and the Wall Street Journal was the making of Anonymous, international hacktivist entity.” On eve of NYSE suspensions, Anonymous issued a cryptic tweet that said “Wonder if tomorrow is going to be bad for Wall Street.... we can only hope.” Right after the system failure in the afternoon on Wednesday, it tweeted again by saying “Anonymous is calling for a protest today at the New York Stock Exchange,” based on which experts reckon that there is a possibility that the technical glitch was the making of it.

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