Brief, global internet outages blamed on software bug

A software bug at a major network provider briefly knocked dozens of financial institutions, airlines and other companies across the globe offline during peak business hours in Asia.

Akamai, which runs one of the internet’s main content-delivery systems, said the outage Thursday was not caused by a cyberattack, but rather a software bug on a service that protects customers against denial-of-service attacks.

Many of the 500 affected Akamai customers had their traffic rerouted in minutes but it took more than four hours to fully restore the system, the Massachusetts company said. Akamai operates mirrors of customer websites in 135 countries — known as edge servers — designed to speed access to them.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the four largest U.S. airlines were among those impacted. Akamai does not name its customers but says they include more than 300 of the world’s banks, more than 30 airlines, more than 200 national government agencies and 825 retailers.

Banking services were severely disrupted, with Westpac, the Commonwealth, ANZ and St George all down, along with the website of the Reserve Bank of Australia, the country’s central bank.

Outages briefly spiked on American, Delta, United and Southwest airlines. Because the disruptions happened late at night in the U.S. when few planes were taking off, airline representatives said there was little to no effect on flights.