A Global IT outage has caused disruption across multiple sectors, impacting banks, airlines, rail services, supermarkets and various other institutions.
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The IT outage has disrupted operations in banks, telecommunications firms, TV and radio broadcasters and supermarkets.
Airlines such as American Airlines, Delta and United Airlines have been hard-hit with flights grounded across the US and similar disruptions reported at airports in Germany and Spain.
Automated boarding scanners at Edinburgh airport went offline prompting manual checks. Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and Berlin’s Brandenburg airport reported delays.
In the US, emergency 911 lines in Alaska were down. In the UK major rail services including Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern faced IT issues.
The UK’s GP surgeries couldn’t access patient records or book appointments. The London Stock Exchange experienced a glitch in its news service affecting the display of opening trades.
Australia saw major disruptions in its flight information systems at Sydney and Melbourne airports, while banks like Commonwealth Bank and ANZ faced issues with transactions.
Sky News in the UK was off-air for a period while Australia’s ABC and Network Ten confirmed system impacts.
Turkish Airlines, KLM, Eurowings, Swiss International Air Lines and Wizz Air faced technical challenges leading to delays and cancellations.
Kenya Airways reported slower service due to booking system issues. Airports in Spain, France and the Philippines also reported disruptions.
The cause of the IT outage is linked to CrowdStrike‘s Falcon sensor, a cybersecurity software used to protect Windows operating systems.
A defect in a content update for Windows hosts led to system crashes commonly known as the “blue screen of death”.
CrowdStrike has acknowledged the issue, identifying it as a non-security-related defect. President George Kurtz stated that the problem was caused by a single content update and confirmed that a fix has been deployed. The company addressed that Mac and Linux systems were not affected.
Various government bodies including the UK’s Ministry of Defence and the US Federal Aviation Administration confirmed they were tracking the situation.
Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator and France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI stated there was no evidence of a cyberattack.
Some affected businesses and systems have started to return to normal operations. Sky News in the UK resumed broadcasting after an hour.
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Airports and airlines have implemented contingency plans with additional staff deployed to manage delays and manual processes.
Governments are actively coordinating to understand the IT outage and support affected entities. Companies like Amazon’s AWS reported investigating connectivity issues related to Windows instances.
Airports in Delhi, Hong Kong, the UK, the US, Tokyo, Berlin, Prague and Zurich were affected. Airlines including United, Delta, American Airlines, Virgin, Jetstar, IndiGo, Akasa Airlines, SpiceJet, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and Turkish Airlines.
Hospitals in Germany, Israel, and the UK. Media outlets such as Sky News UK, ABC News in Australia and the Associated Press.
Emergency services including 911 systems in the US and GP services in the UK. Stock exchanges and brokerage firms globally including the London Stock Exchange and firms in India.
The global IT outage was traced back to a defective software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike which affected their Microsoft Windows hosts.
Both CrowdStrike and Microsoft confirmed that the outage was not due to a cyberattack but rather a technical issue with the software update.
CrowdStrike identified isolated and deployed a fix for the defective update. They advised organizations to communicate with them through official channels for updates.
Many airports had to switch to manual check-in processes. Over 1,000 flights were cancelled worldwide.
Major airlines issued global ground stops leading to delays. Specific incidents included handwritten boarding passes at Delhi Airport and halted flights at Berlin Airport.
Hospitals cancelled surgeries due to disrupted IT systems. Alaska reported unavailability of its 911 system though Australia’s triple-0 call centres remained unaffected.
Sky News UK went completely off-air for a period. Australian broadcasters faced on-air scrambling due to system failures.
Payment systems in supermarkets such as Coles in Australia went down leading to closed self-checkout tills.
Trading operations at stock exchanges including the London Stock Exchange were disrupted. Brokerage firms in India faced technical outages affecting their operations. Payment systems worldwide including in India experienced disruptions.
Microsoft confirmed that most of their services were recovered within hours. They continued to reroute affected traffic to healthy infrastructure and anticipated a resolution soon.
CEO George Kurtz confirmed that the issue was a defect in a single content update for Windows hosts and not a security incident. They provided detailed steps for affected users to resolve the issue manually if automatic updates failed.
Travelers faced delays and cancellations especially at major international hubs. Banks warned customers of disruptions in financial transactions.
Essential services including emergency call centers and health booking systems experienced downtime.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) engaged with Microsoft to address the outage.
The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issued an advisory with steps to tackle the issue.
In Australia, the National Cyber Security Coordinator confirmed that the IT outage was due to a technical issue with a third-party software platform.
The Paris Olympics 2024 organizing committee activated contingency plans to continue operations despite the IT outage.
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