Microsoft Global Outage Live: CrowdStrike said it had rolled out a fix for the problem.
New Delhi:
Airlines, banks, TV channels and financial institutions were thrown into turmoil on Friday by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program.
Microsoft said the issue began on Thursday, affecting Windows users running cybersecurity software CrowdStrike Falcon.
CrowdStrike said it had rolled out a fix for the problem and the firm’s boss, George Kurtz, told US news channel CNBC he wanted to “personally apologise to every organisation, every group and every person who has been impacted”.
Air passengers crowded into airports to wait for news as dozens of flights were cancelled and operators struggled to keep services on track, after an update to a program operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide.
Here are the live updates of Microsoft Cloud outage:
Air passengers around the United States faced delays, while some airlines halted flight operations as Microsoft-based computers ceased to work after a global outage on Friday.
Many airports across the US experienced unexpected disruption with over 1,100 flights getting cancelled and over 1,700 flights operating behind schedule on Friday morning (local time) after certain cloud services of Microsoft were disrupted.
These disruptions gave a hard time to people flying to and from different airports across the US, with many of them expressing their frustration over the unexpected delays and cancellations of flights.
From fearmongering about a looming “World War III” to false narratives linking a cabal of global elite to a cyberattack, a torrent of online conspiracy theories took off Friday after a major IT crash.
Airlines, banks, TV channels and financial institutions were engulfed in turmoil after the crash, one of the biggest in recent years that was the result of a faulty software update to an antivirus program operating on Microsoft Windows.
The proliferation of internet-breaking conspiracy theories on social media platforms — many of which have removed guardrails that once contained the spread of misinformation — illustrates the new normal of information chaos after a major world event.
Some external vendors that police content on Facebook owner Meta’s platforms were affected by the global tech outage that crippled airports, banks and hospitals on Friday, a Meta spokesperson said in response to a Reuters query.
The social media giant experienced a SEV1 as a result of the disruptions, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters, using Meta’s term for a “code red”-style alert involving high-stakes problems with its systems that require urgent attention.
In a statement, the Meta spokesperson acknowledged the issues and said they had been resolved earlier in the day
Catastrophic computer outages caused by a software update from one company have once again exposed the dangers of global technological dependence on a handful of players, experts warned on Friday.
A flawed update sent out by the little-known security firm CrowdStrike brought airlines, TV stations, and myriad other aspects of daily life to a standstill.
The outages affected companies or individuals that use CrowdStrike on the Microsoft Windows platform: when they applied the update, the incompatible software crashed computers into a frozen state known as the “Blue Screen of Death.”
“Today CrowdStrike has become a household name, but not in a good way, and this will take time to settle down,” said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.
The breakdown quickly fueled discussions about internet giants’ power over the increasingly digital world economy, with more activity now taking place in the computing “cloud” or on a few apps or platforms.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company behind a massive global IT outage, is the leader in its sector, known for building software defenses for the cloud computing age and exposing Russian and North Korean threats.
Based in Austin, Texas, the company was founded in 2011 by George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston.
Both Kurtz and Alperovitch had extensive backgrounds in cybersecurity, working at companies like McAfee.
Two years after its founding, CrowdStrike launched its signature product, the Falcon platform.
- Airlines, banks, TV channels and financial institutions were thrown into turmoil on Friday by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program.
- Air passengers crowded into airports to wait for news as dozens of flights were cancelled and operators struggled to keep services on track, after an update to a program operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide.
- Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running cybersecurity software CrowdStrike Falcon.
- CrowdStrike said it had rolled out a fix for the problem and the firm’s boss, George Kurtz, told US news channel CNBC he wanted to “personally apologise to every organisation, every group and every person who has been impacted”.
- It also said it could take a few days to return to normal.