An unprecedented global IT outage caused worldwide chaos Friday morning, leaving passengers stranded at airports, TV networks unable to broadcast and banks unable to serve their customers.
Major cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike issued a faulty software update that slammed users of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, many of whom were greeted with crashing computers and the so-called “blue screen of death” as they were left unable to restart.
“We’re aware of an issue with Windows 365 Cloud PCs caused by a recent update to CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor software,” Microsoft said on its 365 Status X account.
Microsoft warned the bug could cause computers to “get stuck in a restarting state.”
In an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, Kurtz said CrowdStrike was “deeply sorry” for the outage.
Computers from the US to Europe, China and beyond were impacted by what is already considered one of the largest IT outages in history.
“This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time,” prominent cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt said.
What happened? What caused the outage?
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the outage was the result of a flubbed software update and that a fix had been deployed. Separately, Microsoft blamed the outage on a “third-party software provider” and said it was being addressed.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” Kurtz said in a lengthy X post. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.”
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed … Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers,” Kurtz added.
CrowdStrike has yet to provide many specifics. CrowdStrike reportedly warned customers that the issue was related to Falcon, a service that scans company devices for hacking attempts and other cybersecurity threats.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Austin-based company told customers in a status update that the problem was with a software change it had pushed via Falcon out to clients’ computers.
The company said its engineers had undone the change but clients would need to use a workaround to download a fix to affected computers.
Was the outage caused by hackers or a cyberattack?
CrowdStrike said the outage is “not a security incident or cyberattack.” Instead, it resulted from a bug in a software change it pushed to clients.
What’s next for the public?
Both CrowdStrike and Microsoft have signaled a fix is already underway, though it’s unclear when full service will be restored across the various industries affected by the glitch.
Kurtz couldn’t give a timeline for when all systems would be back up and running again.
“As you might imagine, we’ve been on with our customers all night,” he said. “Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up operational because we fixed it on our end.”
“It could be some time,” he added. “Sometimes, some systems won’t automatically recover … we’re not going to relent until we get every customer back to where they were.”
According to the Journal, some affected users may be back up and running soon, but for others, it could take weeks, depending on the system in use, said Simo Kohonen, founder of Finland-based network security company Defused.
“The fix CrowdStrike has given is quite manual and may be difficult, in some cases, to deploy at large scale,” he told the paper.
In an interview with CNBC on Friday, CrowdStrike CEO Kurtz said the company was looking for ways to automate the fix, suggesting customers are stuck with manual fixes for now.
That means affected entities — from banks to stock exchanges to seaports — might take days to fully recover, Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey, told Bloomberg News.
“You’ll have men in white vans going around to try manually fix this problem even when they put out a fix,” Woodward told the outlet. “That is a big job.”
Planes and trains halted around the world
US airports were jam-packed with stranded passengers as the software glitch caused flight cancellations and delays. American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines were among those that grounded flights. Europe’s Ryanair said it was experiencing issues “due to a global 3rd party system outage.”
The MTA advised New York commuters that its customer IT systems were “temporarily offline” due to the technical outage, but train and bus services were still running.
As of 8 a.m. Friday, nearly 2,700 flights had been canceled, including more than 1,000 flights in the US alone, the Journal reported, citing data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company. More than 21,000 flights around the world were delayed by midmorning Friday, the paper reported, citing flight-tracking website FlightAware.
Banks halt service
Banks and other financial services firms in Germany, Australia, India and various other countries warned customers of service outages, while traders were reportedly left unable to execute transactions.
Bank of America, Visa, TD Bank, Wells Fargo and many other banks were having issues as of Friday morning, according to DownDetector.
TV networks down
UK-based Sky News was left unable to broadcast morning coverage and said it was “working hard to restore all services.” News outlets in Australia also experienced issues with going live.
With Post wires
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