Rough Day For Tech

Wednesday was a rough day for tech. The nation's biggest airline, its oldest stock exchange, and its most prominent business newspaper all suffered technology problems that upended service for parts of the day.

And to make things creepy, hacker group Anonymous tweeted late Tuesday: "Wonder if tomorrow is going to be bad for Wall Street...We can only hope."

First, a "router issue" at United suspended all of the company's flights for nearly two hours, leading to 800 flights delays and 60 cancellations. Then at 11.32 a "configuration issue" at the NY Stock Exchange halted trading.

In the midst of that, The Wall Street Journal's website, wsj.com, had "technical difficulties' that sent readers to a temporary site while the paper worked to fix it.

TRNS reports for United, it was the second major technical issue in two months. On 2 June, the airline had to halt all takeoffs in the U.S. because of what it described as computer automation issues. It took the NYSE until 3"10 pm - just over three and a half hours - to resume trading.

WH spox Josh Earnest said President Obama was briefed by WH counterterrorism and homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco and chief of staff Denis McDonough. "There is no indication at this point that there is malicious activity involved," Earnest said

FBI director James Comey, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the agency had been in touch with all three organizations. "We do not see any indication of a cyber breach or a cyber attack," Comey said. Bloomberg reports today that the NYSE shutdown was likely caused by a software update.