Closing post
Time to wrap up.
Global cloud services and cybersecurity firm Cloudflare has admitted it ‘let the internet down’ after a new outage hit the web today.
A host of websites including LinkedIn, Zoom and Downdetector went offline on Friday morning after fresh problems at Cloudflare – the company’s second outage in less than a month.
Cloudflare has blamed the outage on changes being made to its systems as it tried to detect and mitigate an industry-wide security vulnerability.
Chief technical officer Dane Knecht said:
Any outage of our systems is unacceptable, and we know we have let the Internet down again following the incident on November 18. We will be publishing details next week about the work we are doing to stop these types of incidents from occurring.
IT experts said the outage showed the dangers of relying on a small number of cloud infrastructures across the world.
In other news…
A separate IT problem with air traffic control forced flights at Edinburgh airport to be suspended this morning.
Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Bros Discovery in an $82.7bn (£62bn) deal that will dramatically reshape the established Hollywood film and TV industry.
Tesla has launched the lower-priced version of its Model 3 car in Europe in a push to revive sales after a backlash against Elon Musk’s work with Donald Trump and weakening demand for electric vehicles.
Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, has been fined €120m (£105m) after it was found in breach of new EU digital laws.
Buyers attempting to get on to the property ladder in the UK have received a lift, after figures from Halifax showed they are in the best position to snap up a home in a decade.
FTSE 100 ends day in the red
Back in the markets, the UK’s blue-chpi share index has ended the day down almost 0.5%.
The FTSE 100 share index has closed down 9667 points at 9667 points tonight.
Engineering group Smiths (-3.5%) were the top faller, after agreeing to sell its security screening division, Smiths Detection, to funds advised by CVC Capital Partners for £2bn.
They were followed by Metlen Energy (-2.7%) and oil giant BP (-2.6%).
