Sweeping Technology Outage Grounds Flights, Disrupts Businesses and Banks Worldwide
A sweeping technology outage, seemingly triggered by issues involving widely used Microsoft systems, grounded flights, disrupted businesses worldwide and knocked banks offline on Friday.
Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm that lists Microsoft among its clients, said an update to its Falcon Sensor software is at the heart of the issue.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” CEO George Kurtz said in a statement on X.
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” he continued. “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
Microsoft also acknowledged the outage, telling users Friday that “the underlying cause has been fixed, however, residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services.”
It added: “We’re conducting additional mitigations to provide relief.”
The turmoil began for many late Thursday night — with Microsoft users around the world hit with error screens — and persisted into Friday morning. A big screen outside Macy’s at Herald Square in New York featured the so-called “blue screen of death” and a “Recovery” message, as did terminals at LAX Airport and Minneapolis St Paul Airport.
Major U.S. carriers including Delta, United and American Airlines grounded flights Friday morning due to communication issues, triggered by the widespread outage. And without access to check-in and booking services, long lines have formed, snaking their way through airports in Europe and Asia as well as the United States.
As of Friday morning, more than 600 flights into, out of or within the United States had been canceled, according to FlightAware.com.
“The FAA is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines,” the FAA posted on social media. “Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops until the issue is resolved.”
It’s unclear how long the ground stop will remain in place.
With News Wire Services
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