The major internet outage affecting the websites of major retail, financial, logistics and travel websites, was not the result of a cyberattack, according to the hosting provider responsible for the disruption. 

Akamai Technologies, a global content delivery network, said in a statement that a software update had triggered a bug in its DNS service resulting in the outages, and confirmed that the issue was not the result of a cyberattack. 

Down Detector, a service that detects whether websites are working properly or not, began reporting a series of at least 50 major website outages shortly before 12pm EST on Thursday.

The websites of UPS, Delta Air Lines, Costco, American Express and Home Depot were down, displaying domain name system (DNS) service errors.

Akamai runs a global network of servers and rents out space on them to customers who want their websites to load faster, by distributing content from locations closer to end users. 

Last month, a similar issue with one of Akamai's competitors Fastly was blamed for a separate widespread internet outage. 

Among the other potentially affected websites on Thursday were Airbnb, US Bank, FedEx, UPS, Fox News, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, AT&T, Groupon, Expedia, HBO Max and TikTok, according to Down Detector.