‘Is this a cyberattack?’ Grounded flights, a Microsoft outage and AI chaos fuel cybersecurity fears

US flights were grounded for more than four hours on Friday after a technical problem disrupted air traffic control communications and radar, while a separate Microsoft outage affected services worldwide. The timing, alongside other unsettling events, led some people to wonder whether the incidents were connected or signs of a cyberattack, raising concerns about how dependent daily life is on vulnerable systems.

Officials said there was no evidence of malicious activity: the FAA attributed the flight disruption to an overloaded, outdated system during a technology upgrade, and Microsoft blamed an issue linked to a network capacity upgrade. Air travel was improving by Saturday, with schedules expected to return to normal by late Sunday; Microsoft said its services had been restored. The article says the outage affected many millions of people, while passengers described cancellations, delays and uncertainty.