Imma just tell this story in Tweets

We experienced a network connectivity issue. We are working to resolve and apologize for any inconvenience.

— United (@united) 9:43 am – July 8, 2015

Flying United Airlines today? All U.S. flights are currently grounded http://t.co/x849t8AQmH pic.twitter.com/VxxHJ4gtIw

— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) 10:39 am – July 8, 2015

(1 of 2) We’re experiencing a technical issue that we’re working to resolve as quickly as possible.

— NYSE (@NYSE) 12:09 pm – July 8, 2015

(2 of 2) We’re doing our utmost to produce a swift resolution & will be providing further updates as soon as we can. — NYSE (@NYSE) 12:10 pm – July 8, 2015

Trading on NYSE and NYSE MKT has resumed

— NYSE (@NYSE) 3:13 pm – July 8, 2015

So United went down (It went up after 2 hours), and NYSE went down (it went up after 3 hours).  Also down (and now back up) today, the Wall Street Journal computers.

But…..

Homeland Security Dept. says there’s no sign of malicious activity at #NYSE or with earlier United Airlines outage. http://t.co/PcbOPUpdL4 — CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) July 8, 2015

Many think this is a Chinese government hacking attack.  First of all, China is in some serious shit:

While most recent financial news has focused on the crisis currently facing Greece, another disaster is stirring further east that makes Alexis Tsipras’s problems look like chicken feed.

Since the middle of June, the prices of Chinese company shares have fallen by 30 per cent. That amounts to around $3.2 trillion dollars that has been wiped off the stock market in only a few weeks.

It’s hard to make sense of such a huge number, but this figure is higher than the UK’s GDP in 2013, a comparatively modest $2.7 trillion.

The sudden drop in prices came after months of solid growth. Since November last year, Chinese stocks had more than doubled, largely due to small retail investors – ‘mum and dad’ investors playing the stock market – using borrowed money.

There are concerns that the Chinese government’s response could be partially responsible for the sell-off.

Which is why the Asian markets did so bad yesterday.  Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index plunged as much as 8% before closing down 5.8% and China’s Shanghai Composite sank 5.9%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index lost 3.1% to close at 19,737.64.  That’s what was facing Wall Street as it opened today.  (As I write this, the now-reopened Dow is down 238 points today).

But the theory that China might be behind these computer outages today could be supported by data from the Norse Intelligence Network,  a California-based online security company. The company offers up a real-time cyber attack map, which seemed to show at midday on Wednesday that China was the number-one attacker and the US was the number-one target:

I don’t know if this is usual or not.  But it looks like St. Louis is getting bombarded.

To be continued…..?