A technology meltdown left airline, bank, hospital and emergency service workers around the world staring at the dreaded “blue screen of death” on Friday as their computers went dormant in what was described as a historic outage.
“This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it actually happened this time,” Internet security analyst Troy Hunt said via X.
From continent to continent, Microsoft users reported being suddenly taken offline, and the culprit was cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which says one of its routine software updates malfunctioned.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers affected by a flaw identified in a single content update for Windows hosts,” the company said in a statement.
Customers using Mac and Linux operating systems were not affected, CrowdStrike said.
When the faulty update crashed computer systems, dozens of airport travelers were delayed, hospital appointments were delayed and live news broadcasts were interrupted.
How long is the outage?
It is massive, widespread and sudden.
Some computer problems alternate, creating waves of failures. But in this case, the flaw permeated Microsoft systems worldwide almost immediately. The company says its computers, applications and services with Windows 365 Cloud were affected.
Microsoft remains the dominant desktop operating system worldwide, with a market share of more than 72%, according to the website Statcounter. CrowdStrike’s problem doesn’t directly affect all of these machines: its security software is mostly used by businesses and large organizations. The company says its customers include 43 US states and nearly 300 Fortune 500 companies.
Hundreds of thousands of Microsoft outages were reported on Friday, according to Downdetector, the website that tracks outages based on user reports.
In 16 hours, 311,000 global outage reports came in, Michelle Badrian, senior director of communications at Ookla, which owns Downdetector, told NPR. Of that number, he added, 58,000 reports were from the US, 26,000 from the UK and 20,000 from India. A large number of reports also came from Germany, Canada and Australia.
There are signs that relief is on the way: Badrian said that as of noon ET Friday, “we’re seeing the volume of reports decrease both for Microsoft services and for all services overall.”
While server-related outages are common, the scale of the CrowdStrike outage was surprising to many tech watchers.
“This IT outage is a stark reminder of how dependent we are on technology and the many other things going on behind the scenes that most of us are unaware of,” said Louisville-based chief technology officer Adam Robinson at X. “Modern society and the many The comforts we enjoy are a fragile thing.’
What about air travel?
More than 2,000 flights originating or landing in the U.S. were canceled by noon ET Friday, and more than twice that number were delayed, according to tracking website FlightAware.
Delta Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines said they were continuing some or all of their scheduled flights after initially taking off when the problem hit their systems. The airlines also said they are issuing waivers to affected customers.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport – a major hub for long-haul flights – said a “global system failure” affected inbound and outbound flights on one of the busiest days of the year.
Landings at Zurich airport were suspended and flights to Hungary were suspended.
Spanish airport operator Aena reported an “incident” with computer systems at all Spanish airports which it said could cause delays.
What other kinds of services went offline?
In some states, including Alaska and Ohio, 911 lines were down.
The UK’s National Health Service has been widely affected. The NHS said on Friday that doctors’ appointments and patient records had been affected, but that there was no known impact on emergency services. The BBC reported that two-thirds of practices in Northern Ireland have been affected, with doctors unable to access patient records, create prescriptions or see lab test results.
In Germany, some hospitals canceled non-urgent operations.
Broadcasters around the world were also affected. In France and Australia, live TV broadcasts were offline.
Sky News, a major UK news channel, was off air for a period on Friday morning. It later returned, but without “full capability,” its president, David Rhodes, said on Friday afternoon X. A post on Australia’s ABC News website said the broadcaster was experiencing a “major network outage”.
The London Stock Exchange news service has ceased operations. Shipping in the Baltic was also affected, with the container hub of Gdansk in Poland hit by major disruptions.
How do people fix their computers?
CrowdStrike says the problem was not a cyberattack, but rather a software glitch. The company said that after identifying the issue, it withdrew the “problematic channel file” that was affecting customers’ systems.
Because of this move, if a Windows system with CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor goes online after 1:27 A.M. ET Friday, the company said, will not be affected.
He also posted a workaround that involves booting a Windows computer into a recovery environment, deleting a single file in the CrowdStrike directory, and rebooting.
What is CrowdStrike?
It is an American cybersecurity company based in Austin, Texas. The company went public in 2019 and is currently in the S&P 500. Since early July, CrowdStrike stock has had months of gains. However, share prices fell sharply in early trading on Friday.
“This is clearly a major black eye for CrowdStrike,” said WedBush analyst Dan Ives.
CrowdStrike made headlines in 2016 when the company was hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate a breach of its data systems. CrowdStrike determined that the hack was a case of foreign interference – the work of Russian-backed hacking groups.
The company’s flagship product is its “Falcon” cybersecurity software – and it traced the current problem to a change in a sensor in that system. This also helps explain how and why the resulting failures may have spread so quickly: Instead of being stored locally, the Falcon security platform is “100% in the cloud.”
The company apologized for the outage on Friday, saying: “We understand the seriousness of the situation and deeply regret the inconvenience and disruption.”
