Cause of temporary shutdown of major websites worldwide was result of glitched software update

The problem reportedly was with Akamai, which operates one of the world's largest content delivery networks.

The company reported the problem at about 12 p.m. ET. and tweeted about 45 minutes later that it had been fixed and service was restored. The company later said the outage was the result of a bad software update – not a cyberattack, according to NBC4 New York.