Article: Breaking: NYSE and United Airlines Shut Down For Tech Reasons: Hacked?

Both the New York Stock Exchange and United Airlines are shut down, both giving cryptic explanations related to technology.

On Twitter, news organization are clueless, simply echoing the statements that there are tech problems for NYSE and automation problems for United Airlines.

Here's the official statement from the NYSE website:

"NYSE/NYSE MKT has temporarily suspended trading in all symbols. Additional information will follow as soon as possible."

And here's a tweet from United Airlines:

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The Wall Street Journal reports:

"The halt came amid a broad selloff in shares that was spurred by a deepening decline in China's stock market. It's unclear what's causing the disruption. Representatives of the exchange couldn't immediately be reached for comment."

This is an odd, never before seen set of circumstances.

Could these two operations have been hacked?

The first response to my tweet raising the possibility of hacking:

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Godzilla_Govt"-@Godzilla_Govt14m14 minutes ago
@robkall Well.. the fallout from #HackingTeam vulns being published via adobe & windows over the weekend is malware in hands of unknowns.

Here is the Twitter profile for Hacking Team:

HackingTeam @hackingteam
Developing effective, easy-to-use offensive technology to support the operations of the worldwide law enforcement and intelligence communities.
Milan, Italy hackingteam.com

Apparently, Hacking Team itself was hacked recently, exposing massive vulnerabilties throughout the world.

John McAfee reports in and IBTimes article, Hacking Team data leak portends grim future of global cyberwar:

The hack of Hacking Team, on the surface, and according to the world's cybersecurity press, appears to be a uniquely monumental event that threatens to bring down a well-known name in the mass surveillance industry.
The known fact that the company created a backdoor to its own products, and the backdoor's details have now been published, renders all of those products useless and obsolete.
It additionally threatens the security integrity of all of the company's clients. Those backdoors could provide hackers with the identity of every covert agency's targets, and the dates, times, means and results of every investigation.
You can bet that prior to the release of the hacked information, every agency using these products had already been hacked. This bodes ill for law enforcement and covert agencies."

Here are a few tweets that give further background to the reference to #hackingteam

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Thomas Drake @Thomas_Drake1 Jul 7

#HackingTeam hacked & jacked. Had own backdoor into every customer's software, something its customers weren't told. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacking-team-asks-customers-to-stop-using-its-software-after-hack "

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and

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David Gilbert@daithaigilbert 4 hours ago

. @officialmcafee says that #HackingTeam breach portends a grim future of global cyberwar http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/john-mcafee-hacking-team-data-leak-portends-grim-future-global-cyberwar-1509767 "

Update: 7/8 1:04 PM EST from NYSE:

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NYSE@NYSE 35 minutes ago
(1 of 3) The issue we are experiencing is an internal technical issue and is not the result of a cyber breach.

Update: CNN tweeted at 12:36 PM EST:

Homeland Security Dept. says there's no sign of malicious activity at #NYSE or with earlier United Airlines outage. http://cnnmon.ie/1NOIshg

And of course, we believe everything that Homeland Security tells us.

Here's are some questions. Would an airline or stock exchange admit to being hacked? What would the market think of an airline or a stock exchange that could be hacked. How would trust in the safety and reliability be affected? Would papa Obama decide that such news would be too damaging to the market, to air travel? (I've changed the categorization of this article from news to Op-Ed.)