Global IT outage causes chaos, impacts airlines, banks, media and telecoms | Technology News

A massive technology failure has paralyzed the operations of companies and institutions in numerous countries and plunged airports, airlines, railway companies, government agencies, banks, stock exchanges, supermarkets, telecommunications companies, the healthcare system and the media into chaos.

The outage was caused by an update to a product from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike that caused computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system to crash.

Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull reported from London: “At CrowdStrike, there appears to have been some sort of mandatory software update that went horribly wrong.”

The company had reported that the problem was related to its Falcon sensor product, and engineers had identified a “content delivery issue,” Hull said.

“Essentially, what happens is when you sit in front of your terminal. If your terminal is a Microsoft Windows terminal, all of a sudden a blank blue screen appears. This is called the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ error. You are locked out of your operating system,” Hull said.

George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, said Friday that the company is “actively working with customers” affected by “a defect in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” he said in a post on X.

CrowdStrike is actively working with customers affected by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not affected. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed. We…

— George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 19, 2024

Microsoft said on Friday that the “underlying cause” of the global outage had been “resolved” but that “residual impacts” continued to impact some Office 365 apps and services.

At the time of reporting, some of the companies and computer application systems affected by the outage were beginning to return to normal operations. This included Sky News in the UK, which had been out for an hour earlier in the morning.

The outages had far-reaching effects, with transport systems around the world being hit the hardest.

In the United States, major airlines Delta, United and American Airlines had to lift their flight bans on Friday morning due to a communications problem, according to an update from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

In Australia, flight information screens at Sydney Airport were blank. The airport said flights were arriving and departing, but travelers should expect delays.

Melbourne Airport said some airlines’ check-in procedures were impacted.

Airports in the UK, Germany, India, Malaysia and the Philippines also reported operational disruptions.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of Europe’s busiest airports, was also affected. A spokesman said: “The outage affects flights to and from Schiphol,” adding that it was not yet clear how many flights were affected.

There are “disruptions” at all airports in Spain, airport operator Aena said.

Air France said its flight operations were also affected, but that flights already in operation were not affected.

The Hong Kong Airport Authority said that the airlines affected by the outage had switched to manual check-in and that flight operations had not been affected.

Kenya Airways’ booking system was affected, the airline said, warning customers that service would be slower than usual.

Numerous other sectors were also affected.

Banks and other financial institutions from Australia to India and South Africa warned their customers about disruptions to their services.

Australia’s largest bank, Commonwealth Bank (CBA.AX), said some customers were unable to transfer money due to the service outage.

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) in the UK experienced a technical glitch that affected messaging services and delayed the display of opening trading prices.

The broadcasts of media companies were also significantly disrupted.

Australia’s national broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Network Ten confirmed that their systems were affected.

Sky News, one of Britain’s largest news channels, has cancelled its broadcasts and apologised for not being able to broadcast live.

Government services were also affected.

In the UK, booking systems used by doctors were offline, according to several reports from medical officials on X.

In Australia, Victoria state police said some internal systems were affected by the outage, but emergency services were operating normally.

According to Rafael Gonzalez-Montero, head of New Zealand’s parliamentary services, Parliament’s computer systems were also affected.

Amazon’s AWS cloud service provider said in a statement that it is “investigating reports of connectivity issues with Windows EC2 instances and workspaces within AWS.”

No “malicious act”

Al Jazeera’s Hull said: “The big question, of course, is: is this some kind of massive technological breakdown or something even worse, a hugely crippling global cyberattack?” The burden of evidence seems to point to the former, he added.

Australia’s National Cybersecurity Coordinator said on Friday that they were aware of a “large-scale technical outage” affecting numerous businesses and services across the country.

“Based on our current information, this outage is related to a technical issue with a third-party software platform used by the affected companies,” the agency said in a statement.

“There is no information to suggest that this is a cybersecurity incident. We continue to work with all key stakeholders.”

The French cybersecurity agency said on Friday that there was no evidence that the global IT outage was “the result of a cyberattack.”

“Teams are fully mobilized to identify and support the affected facilities in France and to understand the origin of this outage,” said ANSSI, the national cybersecurity agency.

A British government security source told Reuters that the blackout was not considered a “malicious act.”

The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a post on X that some of its systems were affected, including its “confirmation service.” “We advise users to refrain from any transactions until this issue is resolved,” it said.