McDonald's has revealed the technical problems which brought much of its fast food chain to a standstill on Friday were caused by a third party provider. The international restaurant said the global outage happened during a "configuration change" and stopped stores taking orders in the UK, Australia and Japan - amongst others. McDonald's stressed the issue was not caused by a cyber attack. Stores in the UK and Australia are open again after their systems froze. The company experienced a "global technology system outage, which was quickly identified and corrected," McDonald's chief information officer Brian Rice, said. Problems started in the early hours and continued throughout the morning, but the company would not say how many stores were affected. Problems were reported in several countries, including New Zealand, Austria and Germany, but come the afternoon they were starting to get resolved. The fast food chain has about 40,000 restaurants worldwide, with around 1,450 restaurants across the UK and Ireland and more than 14,000 stores in the United States. It operates nearly 3,000 across Japan and roughly 1,000 in Australia.
