Square outage attributed to DNS error

TechCrunch reports that major payments technology platform Square disclosed that a daylong outage it suffered late last week was prompted by a DNS error and not by a cyberattack. "While making several standard changes to our internal network software, the combination of updates prevented our systems from properly communicating with each other, and ultimately caused the disruption. The issue also affected many of our internal tools for troubleshooting and support, making them temporarily unavailable," said Square. No further information regarding the DNS issue has been provided but similar outages stemming from DNS concerns have been reported by major DNS service provider Akamai and note-taking app Notion in 2021. However, cyberattacks aimed at DNS services have also been conducted, with major internet performance management firm Dyn having its DNS servers compromised by a Mirai botnet attack in 2016, which also resulted in the disruption of numerous online sites, including Twitter, Shopify, Spotify, and SoundCloud.