Biggest IT outage in history? Microsoft glitch hits flights, banks, broadcasters
A major IT outage affecting systems globally, including in India, Australia, Germany and other countries was reported on Friday.
A massive Microsoft outage unleashed havoc on computer systems across the world, grounding flights and crippling banks, stock exchanges, payment systems and emergency services. Microsoft, in a tweet approximately six hours after the outage was first reported, said that "Multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress".
Hours later, Microsoft said that the "underlying cause for a global outage has been fixed", but the residual impact of cybersecurity outages are continuing to affect some Office 365 apps and services.
Even the CEO of antivirus firm CrowdStrike said that a fix has been deployed for a bug that caused a global IT outage affecting airports, banks and media across the world.
The outage is possibly due to the failure of Crowdstrike Falcon, a cybersecurity platform that provides security solutions for Microsoft Windows. The disruptions continued hours after Microsoft said it was fixing the issue.
Both Microsoft and CrowdStrike have ruled out claims of cyber attack and said that the outage took place due to a "recent update received in the product".
In India, the outage caused widespread disruptions in flight operations, payment systems, and trading, among other services. Flight delays were reported across airports, leading to long queues. The outage affected booking and check-in services for several airlines, including IndiGo, Akasa Airlines, and SpiceJet.
The central government, taking cognisance of the cyber outage, stated that it is in discussions with Microsoft to resolve the issue. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is likely to issue an advisory on the outage.
MAJOR AIRLINE DISRUPTIONS
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines announced that the outage made it "impossible" to handle flights. "KLM has also been affected by the global computer outage, making it impossible to handle flights. ...We are working hard to resolve the problem. For now, we are forced to suspend most of the operation," the airline said.
Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, one of Europe's busiest hubs, was affected by the global outage. "The outage has an impact on flights flying from and to Schiphol," a spokesperson said.
Berlin Airport halted all flights due to a technical fault. The airport operator said in a post on social media that check-ins were delayed due to the error.
In the US, several major airlines, including American Airlines, Delta, and United, reportedly grounded all flights.
Authorities in Spain reported a "computer incident" at all its airports, while Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions that would affect “all airlines operating across the Network".
Flyers at Edinburgh Airport in Britain were unable to use automated boarding pass scanners, and monitors at security displayed a message saying "server offline." Turkish Airlines was also experiencing problems with ticketing, check-in, and reservation processes due to a global technical issue in information systems.
Microsoft outage: What is CrowdStrike, the service causing ‘Blue Screen of Death’ worldwide
Microsoft Windows users worldwide including India, Australia, Germany, the United States, the UK and more are seeing a blue screen issue on their laptops. This has made their systems restart or shut down automatically. Companies like Dell Technologies have stated that this crash has been caused due to a recent CrowdStrike update.
What is CrowdStrike?
CrowdSrike is a cybersecurity platform that provides security solutions to users and businesses. Using a single sensor and unified threat interface with attack correlation across endpoints, workloads, and identity, Falcon Identity Threat Protection stops identity-driven breaches in real time.
CrowdStrike has acknowledged the error and said, “Our Engineers are actively working to resolve this issue and there is no need to open a support ticket.” The company will update the users once this issue is resolved.
Microsoft confirmed the Azure outage was resolved early Friday, but the disruption served as a stark reminder of the potential consequences when critical infrastructure relies heavily on cloud services. This outage has affected airlines, banks, supermarkets, media outlets and other businesses.
What is Blue Screen of Death?
The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is a critical error screen that shows up on Windows operating systems. It happens when the system crashes due to a severe issue that prevents it from working safely. When this error occurs, the computer restarts unexpectedly, and unsaved data is likely to be lost.
In this case, the Blue Screen of Death error states, “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We are just collecting some error info, the we will restart for you.”
This issue is seen across Windows, Mac and Linux.
It has been reported that the buggy update is caused by CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor to malfunction and conflict with the Windows system.
Microsoft says cause of outage at 365 apps and services fixed
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized for a global tech failure that disrupted multiple industries on Friday, vowing to work with all of its customers as they work to get their operations back online.
"We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our company," he told NBC News' "Today" program.
"Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and it'll be operational," Kurtz said. "It could be some time for some systems that won't automatically recover," he added, but the company "would make sure every customer is fully recovered."
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