Senator Skeptical NYSE, United Failures a Coincidence

Well, today was weird. First United Airlines suffered a huge cyber glitch, and then the New York Stock Exchange. People hoping to read all about it on the Wall Street Journal found the newspaper's website down as well. Despite assurances from the powers-that-be that the failures weren't connected, conspiracy theorists were quick to pounce, and Salon pokes fun at some of the more heated ones here. But one person also skeptical about the explanations happened to be a US senator, and she also happened to be in the presence of the FBI chief during a hearing, notes Gizmodo.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski told James Comey. “Is the FBI investigating these as breaches?” Comey responded that "we're not believers in coincidences, either," but said the FBI had been in touch with all three companies and found nothing sinister. "We don’t see a connection to a cyber breach or cyberattack.” The Journal probably went down because so many people were trying to read about the NYSE failure, he added. (More NYSE stories.)