NEW YORK (Web Desk) – United Airlines was writing boarding passes by hand before stopping all flights for three hours. Then the New York Stock Exchange halted all trades, citing a mysterious “technical glitch,” reported RT.
It wasn’t a cyberattack, US officials said – but what was it?
The airline blamed its woes on a problem with a router. By the time the computers were back up and the order was lifted, almost two hours later, some 800 flights had been delayed, and a total of 59 flights by United and its regional partners were canceled.
“An issue with a [computer] router degraded network connectivity for various applications, causing this morning’s operational disruption,” United said in a statement. “We fixed the router issue, which is enabling us to restore normal functions.”
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) also called a halt to all trades and said all open orders would be canceled. Though trade continued on other exchanges, rampant speculation about the nature and cause of the problem spread through the social media like wildfire.
US federal law authorities cited fears of terrorism in a bid to subvert commercial encryption.
