Hey Wednesday, what is going on? Two large U.S. companies and even the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) hit the hump day head on. Hours ago, the NYSE reported a computer glitch stopped all trading, and probably created migraines and near heart attacks. Not much is being said about the glitch that seemed contagious Wednesday early afternoon. Here is what we know so far.
NYSE
The markets reopened for just a few hours after a sudden screeching halt to trading. The volatility of the markets have already stretched nerves tight and the sudden blue screen of death made hearts flutter to near collisions when officials reported a glitch was forcing the NYSE to stop trading. The NYSE notified officials of a glitch that eventually shut down trading at about 11:32 a.m. this morning local time. Originally there was speculation this was an external attack, but officials believe the problem was directly with the NYSE systems. Odd considering the chain of events which led to the…
Wall Street Journal
Mere minutes after the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) announced the outage at the NYSE, their website starting displaying a 504 error page. This was seen on their home page and various sections of their online newspaper. Speculation includes when the NYSE collapsed and the WSJ posted the story, their servers just became overwhelmed and crashed by the amount of viewers. That is a possible cause. The site is back to full functionality now, but does not explain what happened to…
United Airlines
Before the NYSE and WSJ’s computer issues, United Airlines experienced their own issues. To assure fears or maybe promote them (depending on individual viewpoints), Homeland Security Chief, Jeh Johnson, said the airline’s system issue was not connected to the NYSE or the WSJ. Johnson told CNN Money, “I have spoken to the CEO of United myself and it appears that the malfunctions from United and New York Stock Exchange were not the result of any nefarious actor.” It appears the company is faulting a router/automation issue for the sudden disconnect.
More than 4,000 worldwide flights were impacted due to the computer issue as the airline worked to get back online within an hour.
Passengers are saying when it happened, their planes experienced a delay and when it was time to run to their connecting flight, they missed it. This is expected to happened hundreds of times more. United said they would permit flyers to alter their travel plans due to the glitch without facing fees.
An airline official told Homeland Security this was not a hacking attempt.
It is not often when three major American points - a leading U.S.equities-based exchange, a major U.S. newspaper and a major airline all experience a computer glitch within minutes or hours of one another. While each of the companies pointed internally to the issue, Brookings Institute, a Washington D.C. thinktank also experienced glitches earlier this afternoon.