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A Bit of a Cyber-Coincidence?
First United’s flights are halted owing to a “glitch,” and now the NYSE?
Trading in all securities were halted on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday following earlier reports of technical difficulties, although NYSE-listed issues was still trading on other exchanges.
After the halt, U.S. stocks extended their losses, but in low volumes, with the S&P 500 hitting a session low and the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq both falling more than 1 percent.
“It’s under control. We’re just waiting for word. There’s no sign of panic at all,” Mark Otto of J. Streicher & Co in New York said from the NYSE floor.
The editors had a brief discussion about how to handle this news, given that we’d hardly wish to be the last cordial conservatives on the Internet to start screaming that we’re under a cyber-attack, but we wish to preserve our reputation for probity and don’t want to look like idiots a few hours from now.
For what it’s worth, DHS is claiming there’s no sign of malicious activity. No sign, that is, apart from United Airlines and the NYSE going down within hours of each other. While the Chinese markets are crashing. Then there’s that whole business about China lifting all our government employees’ personnel data. But apart from that, no sign of malicious activity.
The editors verdict: This may be a genuine coincidence. But no, you’re not entering fruitcake conspiracy-theory territory if it occurs to you to wonder whether we’re entirely safe on the cyber-front. We’re wondering, too.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Science & Technology
Throw in the Wall Street Journal and Zero Hedge, both going down within the same 90 minutes as UA and the NYSE, and I’d say the question of whether this is an attack is permissible even under Ricochet’s heightened rules against conspiracy theory.
I would too.
Geesh.
Get ready.
Ms Berlinski,
I think you are being very tough on fruitcake conspiracy-theories. I mean what would the world be without fruitcakes or conspiracies.
(please click on small photo; hey why didn’t it work like normal..you don’t think…)
I rest my case.
Regards,
Jim
As long as we have Obamaphone and SNAP, what difference does it make?
It was caused by a YouTube video.
If you’re riveted to this news right now and reading between the lines, you’ll notice that editors the world around are trying to decide whether they want to be the fools who said, “It looks like a cyber-attack” when in fact it wasn’t, or the fools who said, “No sign of a cyber-attack” when in fact it was. Anyway, NYSE says it wasn’t:
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(1 of 3) The issue we are experiencing is an internal technical issue and is not the result of a cyber breach.
Please cease and desist posting all other comments to this thread.
We won’t get a better one than this…
Glitch better have my money.
#tweetoftheday
It was a dry run. Time to stock the bunker. Tell William Devane to put a rush on the next gold/silver order.
#NYSE Spokeshole
#JoshEarnest
#FBI
And all the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Couldn’t put the NYSE
Together again.
I’m just glad we have the A team on the job these days. Obama, Kerry, Biden — these people know what’s what and how to fix what’s what so that I can sleep safely in my bed at night. Our guardians never sleep — even at 2:00 am they can be woken from a sound sleep and 1) know exactly what to do and 2) then do it.
As a member of the Illuminati World Conspiracy I can assure you that this is pure coincidence. Our world altering cyber attack is not scheduled for another 5 months, when it will occur in conjunction with the alignment of the Five Gates. At that point be on the look out for our albino assassins.
In all truth what we have to ask ourselves is how are the Jews behind this, because if there is one thing I know about conspiracies is that they are all controlled by Jews.
Since when has potentially being wrong on something unknowable made anyone a fool?
[Comment redacted by sinister forces which shall not be disclosed at this time].
Heard inside Chinese Communist Party HQ:
“Hey, our stock market is tanking”
“Freeze all Chinese trading. And go screw up the American systems again so people won’t pour their money into Gweilo banks. Hit some major industries while you’re at it. We still have their passwords, don’t we? LOL, one day silly white devils will learn not to use “123456” as admin password. Oh, and while we’re at it, DDOS ZeroHedge. They’ve been annoying me lately”.
Bane.
If this were a cyber attack, would we be told it was a cyber attack?
Out of conspiratorial inquiry, does anyone know how many of the top Chinese stocks are cross listed between SSE and NYSE?
That’s a serious question, not necessarily rumor mongering by the way!
If the NYSE and SSE did have a number of cross listed stocks, would shareholders have sold off stock on NYSE as a proxy for the halted trading on the Chinese exchange?
One of the things I’ve noticed in a number of articles about the Chinese stock market is that Xi Jinping has put an enormous amount of prestige on the line by connecting Chinese stocks and his premiership. Would his regime really refrain from cyber attacks to stop a panic that might lose the CCP the Mandate of Heaven in the eyes of the populace?
Can’t the Supreme Court just declare this didn’t happen so we can all get on with our sexy, sexy lives?
Well, one wouldn’t wish immediately to nuke Beijing if it turned out that it wasn’t their fault. That would be an embarrassing blunder.
It was the Dukes.
I’m not normally conspiracy-minded, but this is an intriguing idea.
In entirely unrelated news, New Jersey’s DMV computer system crashed a little while ago.
Thanks, Tommy. When it uncrashes then we panic.
One element of one exchange is down. (there are 11). You can trade those same securities on other exchanges, and people are. The Dow is down about 250 points, which was where it was prior to trading being halted. If anyone was especially worried, it would be down a lot further.
For perspective, in the 1987 Black Monday crash, the Dow fell over 500 points in one day from 2200 to 1700. Today the Dow trades around 17,500. Not a big deal.
At the end of the day, when you build highly complex, highly integrated software systems, things will break from time to time. No amount of handwringing will change that.
AAAHHHAAAAA!!!!! I knew it Christie is in with the Chinese…they’re going to take over the Newark Airport..next target the Holland Tunnel..once they control the Tunnel they declare New Jersey an independent country and succeed from the Union….
…..hmmmmm…actually none of that made any sense.
Never mind.
Regards,
Jim
It’s good to actually laugh about it after reading these comments ! Casey’s picture alone cracks me up!
It’s hard to tell what’s really happening with China since they’re so secretive. If the situation isn’t serious enough financially, wouldn’t it also affect supply output? Try finding anything not made in China, even a light bulb – most parts even for our military come from there, correct? A very large, expensive frig just crapped out in a rental that I manage – the owner was sold same product was on back order for 4-6 weeks, maybe longer. She had to go in a different direction.
Never a dull moment.
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal was heard to say “We Blame George W. Bush”.