New York mayor seeks to assure residents that internet outage was not a cyberattack

A widespread technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

In New York, Mayor Eric Adams held a news conference to discuss the impact and response actions his city had taken. Adams described the CrowdStrike software update that impacted some systems. The mayor sought to assure New Yorkers that there was no cyber attack.

"They sent out a software update that inadvertently took systems offline. This was not a cyber attack that was, hit by, cyber hit on our city infrastructure," Adams said.