FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford says officials have concluded that the failure behind the nationwide ground stop was not a cyber attack. That goes further than Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who had said only that it "appears" to have been mechanically driven.
"I think we've all concluded that it's not a cyber issue"
At the Saturday 14 November press briefing, Bedford said the White House situation room and the wider national security infrastructure were activated, and that the FBI was in FAA facilities investigating, Yahoo News reports.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said FBI Director Kash Patel, the director of national intelligence and the Defense Department joined a conference call because of concern about a cyber attack from another country. He said they saw no online chatter to indicate a hacking attempt.
Duffy said the FAA isolated the location where the problem began and took it offline, after which the system worked properly.
"We feel very comfortable that that was the root cause of the impact on our system... It wasn't a foreign actor"
This is the firmest statement yet from officials ruling out an attack. Their account of the cause has not been independently checked.