Global Microsoft Outage: Airline, Markets, and Banks hit by Massive System Failure
CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company, has been linked to a widespread problem affecting the Windows operating system. The business said on Friday that it had received reports of crashes on Microsoft Windows and in a statement posted on its website that a faulty software update was to blame.
It caused thousands of workers to lose the ability to access their computers, and affected industries ranging from healthcare to banking.
The issue users were experiencing was acknowledged by Microsoft 365, which said on Friday morning: "We are investigating an issue that may affect users' ability to access Microsoft 365 apps and services. doing."
Afterward, Microsoft announced in a blog post early Friday afternoon that CrowdStrike was in direct contact with its customers through its support site and that it had identified the issue, isolated it, and developed a solution." For the latest updates, we refer users to the support portal. We will also continue to update our website with comprehensive and ongoing information."
Leading cybersecurity software firm CrowdStrike was founded in 2012 by its CEO George Kurtz, Dmitry Alparovich and Greg Marston.
"The world's most advanced cloud-native platform that protects and enables the people, processes and technologies that drive the modern enterprise" is what CrowdStrike claims on its website.
The purpose of the Biden administration's Homeland Security Advisory Council is to offer guidance and expertise to support decision-making "within the scope of homeland security operations." Alperovitch, the former chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, is a member of the council.
Global cyber security company CrowdStrike claimed it had discovered a technical flaw in its software and was working to fix it, which was the root of the problem. Microsoft uses CrowdStrike's antivirus software on its Windows devices.
"Earlier today, the CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down multiple IT systems globally," Microsoft told CBS News in a statement.
Later on Friday, Microsoft said on X that it had "repaired all previously affected Microsoft 365 apps and services and completed our mitigation measures." We are going to start monitoring to make sure the impact is fully remedied."
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said in a statement that the problem has been found and is being fixed. "This is not a security incident or a cyber-attack," he continued. When the problem existed and was isolated, a solution was implemented.
Kurtz once again apologized to the affected parties in an update posted on social media Friday afternoon. He also promised to "provide full transparency on how this happened and what steps we are taking to prevent anything like this from happening again."
As of Friday night, more than 3,000 flights had been canceled in, in or out of the United States, and more than 11,400 had been delayed, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service. There were more than 42,000 delayed flights worldwide on Friday.
After shutting down operations earlier in the day due to the outage, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines resumed at least some flights on Friday morning.
American Airlines issued a statement Friday night saying, "We have resumed operations today and hope to have a reliable operation for our customers tomorrow."
United Airlines Chief Operating Officer Toby Enquist added in a statement late Friday night that "we are ready to return to normal operations on Saturday, even though we had to cancel more flights and It had to be delayed which we never wanted."
The Federal Aviation Administration posted a time-lapse of the planes restarting on Friday afternoon.
Because many computer systems were down, limiting access to critical digital information, Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital canceled all previously scheduled procedures and non-urgent medical visits.
As of late, Meghan Mahoney, a neuroICU nurse, told CBS News, "We do everything on our computer." "People's allergies and medical history. So, we should go back to paper charting when that subsides."
All anesthesia-related procedures were postponed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Atlanta's Emory Health Care System postponed some surgical procedures. The outpatient clinic at Seattle Children's Hospital has closed.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday afternoon that it is "working to evaluate the impact of the crowd strike shutdown on patient care and HHS systems, services and operations."
"A global shutdown of the cybersecurity software CrowdStrike is currently affecting DHS systems," according to a Department of Homeland Security memo to workers obtained by CBS News. You may be seeing in the news how many businesses around the world are being affected by this. There was no cyber-attack."
Portland, Oregon announced a state of emergency on Friday by the city's mayor, Ted Wheeler. "Immediate response and resources to bring the city's systems back to a fully operational level" will be made possible by the announcement. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that because officials had already practiced responding to IT problems through drills, the outage had no impact on city operations.
SAS Airlines, KLM, and Lufthansa all experienced problems across Europe. According to BBC News, a partner network of CBS News, flights were not allowed to arrive at Switzerland's major airport. In India, everything was done by hand at Delhi, the country's main airport. According to the BBC, gate information on whiteboards was being updated manually and there were no working electric check-in terminals.
Doctors in the UK reported they were having trouble logging into their online booking system, while hospitals in Germany announced they were canceling elective surgeries on Friday. In the United Kingdom, pharmacists reported difficulties in obtaining prescriptions and obtaining delivery of medicines.
Although some of its systems were affected, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said there were no operational problems related to the outage. Some systems have functions that allow you to use them during downtime.
The London Stock Exchange reported that although trading was unaffected, its regulatory news service was disrupted.
According to a New York Stock Exchange representative, markets were fully operational, and a normal opening was expected.
Starbucks claimed that customers were unable to use its mobile ordering services due to the outage. Delivery services such as FedEx have also said that some packages may be delayed due to disruptions.
On Friday, the CrowdStrike outage crashed computers at several colleges and disrupted the widely used fall enrollment program for K–12 students.
Students at the private University of Rochester in New York were instructed to restart their computers repeatedly until the problem was resolved. University of Alabama technology staff reported that one of the campus's Microsoft Windows machines crashed. Disruptions were also reported by the universities of Kentucky and University of Rutgers.
K–12 schools in Maryland and Kansas reported experiencing problems with PowerSchool, a popular program for enrolling and ranking students, even though summer vacation had just ended. According to an update on the website Friday morning, the company's core products, including its enrollment feature, were affected by the outage.
After the outage, state and local law enforcement organizations reported disruptions to 911 services across the country.
According to Downdetector, the number of nationwide reports of 911 outages peaked just before 3 a.m. Friday.
Agencies in at least seven states, including 911 systems in New Hampshire, Fulton County, Indiana, Middletown, Ohio, and the St. Louis County Sheriff's Office and Faribault Police Department in Minnesota reported brief outages.
Austin McDaniel, director of communications for the Alaska Department of Public Safety, sent an email to USA Today stating that non-emergency and 911 calls to various dispatch centers in Alaska "could not be answered" during the course of approximately For seven hours at night.
"Dispatch centers were converted to analog phone systems or partner dispatch centers with no impact on continuing calls," he said. The state's systems were back up and running around 4:23 a.m. local time.
The Arizona Republic, part of the USA Today Network, said the Phoenix Police Department was also affected. 911 call centers were able to accept calls, but had to manually deploy officers.
In an email to USA TODAY, the Federal Communications Commission said it is aware of complaints about 911 outages.
We are working closely with other federal agencies to offer assistance and determine the severity of these service disruptions.
As long as these shutdowns don't last for days, there shouldn't be any impact on the overall economy.
According to Mark Zindi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, IT disruption is currently more worrisome than economic collapse. "If this continues into the first part of next week, financial losses will begin to accumulate."Canceled flights can be rescheduled, and financial transactions can be completed later, provided the disruption lasts only a day or two.
"For the rest of the month, there's plenty of room for activity," said Jonathan Miller, senior U.S. economist at Barclays.
According to Omar Grossman, chief information officer at identity security company CyberArk, some of the issues raised will likely take some time to resolve with CrowdStrike's treatment, as reported by Reuters. According to them, the cause of the problem is endpoint detection and response (EDR) software, which is installed on individual client PCs.
It appears that endpoints cannot be updated remotely due to their crash (blue screen of death), and each endpoint must be configured manually. According to Grossman, the process is expected to take days. According to CrowdStrike's Kurtz in an interview with CNBC, many affected systems were already starting to recover. For some users, the solution may be as simple as restarting their PC or server.
"Some systems may not be fully restored, and we are working with each customer individually to ensure we can get them up and running and operational," he said. Without offering a timeline, Kurtz suggested that many businesses and institutions globally will need to rely on their in-house IT staff to bring their systems back online.
Alex Parker is a seasoned technology writer with over a decade of experience in the tech industry. With a background in computer science and a passion for innovation, Alex specializes in breaking down complex technological concepts into accessible, engaging content.
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