Cyber Experts: China Attacked US Stocks, Companies -Odds of 'Glitches' in 3 Major Systems 'Astronomically Low'

Art Moore / WND

The temporary shutdown Wednesday of New York Stock Exchange trading, United Airlines flights, the Wall Street Journal website and other U.S. business activity likely was the result of a major cyberattack from China, according to a cyberwarfare intelligence analyst who contracts with the U.S. government and a chief investment officer who consults daily with cyber intelligence sources.

The New York Stock Exchange claimed the problem that caused a halt to stock trading for more than three hours was an “internal technical issue” and “not the result of a cyber breach,” while a Department of Homeland Security told CNN there is “no sign of malicious activity” at the NYSE or with the earlier outage experienced by United Airlines.

But the intel analyst, who has sources throughout China and around the world and asked not to be named for security reasons, said that on its face, the confluence of “glitches” doesn’t add up to coincidence.

“I have been in this business way too long to believe in coincidences. I hear such a thing may happen, but I have never seen one,” he told WND in a telephone interview Thursday.

“A Nation Forsaken: EMP: The Escalating Threat of an American Catastrophe” spotlights what America’s enemies already know about the vulnerability of its infrastructure.

He explained that the “mission-critical systems” of major corporations and governments have communications, power, processing and storage redundancies built in that allow for a seamless “hot swapover” to keep them running if one part of the system is incapacitated.

“The odds of failure of three systems like this, simultaneously, are in the trillions to one,” he said of the NYSE, United Airlines and the Wall Street Journal.

“Mathematically it is possible,” he added. “But it is also possible for the sun to turn bright red.”

A cyber attack, he explained, is designed so that the redundant systems cannot take over.

“Glitches can happen, but the entire design philosophy behind building an enterprise-design architecture is to prevent a single glitch from dropping the whole system,” he said.

“Three high-end, redundant design systems failing in short order – the odds of that are astronomically low.”

The analyst said his sources around the world – including in Egypt, Russia, the Netherlands and Taiwan – all point to a cyberattack from China.

Hard hit

Jeffrey C. Borneman, chief investment officer of Rampart Portfolio Partners LLC in Stamford, Connecticut, told WND he exchanges information daily with cyber warfare experts and intelligence sources who told him the shutdowns Wednesday were the result of an attack.

“It was a very coordinated attack,” he told WND in a telephone interview. “God bless United Airlines, who foresaw this coming years ago and moved their operation to Canada. That’s why they were only down for an hour.”

Borneman said he specializes in metals, defense, energy and food precisely “in anticipation of yesterday’s events and more.”

He said the attack on the NYSE was “overt.”

“For them to be down three hours, it means the attack was substantial. This wasn’t a hiccup. They get 25,000 attacks an hour, but this one really hit them hard,” he said.

Borneman said the State Department and Homeland Security erred in immediately declaring to the public it was not a deliberate attack.

“For them to come out and say it’s absolutely not a terrorist attack causes everybody to think, ‘Well if you don’t know what it was, how do you know it was not a terrorist attack?’” he said.

“So, they’re really playing on our general ignorance.”

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In a Twitter message, the NYSE said Wednesday it “chose to suspend trading to avoid problems arising from our technical issue.”

NYSE corporate communications spokeswoman Sara Rich declined to comment on the record on the allegations of a cyber attack, referring WND to a statement issued Thursday morning pinning the blame on the rollout of new software.

The NYSE said the initial release of the software was deployed on one trading unit, according to standard practice, and “as customers began connecting after 7 am on Wednesday morning, there were communication issues between customer gateways and the trading unit with the new release.”

Read more at WND:

http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/cyber-experts-china-attacked-u-s-stocks-companies/