A widespread outage in Microsoft computer systems disrupted flights and banking, among other services, around the world on Friday.
The “blue screen of death” appeared on Windows workstations across the globe, indicating a systems crash.
Experts soon identified the cause of this as a faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike. This caused the glitch in computers and offline servers, forcing them into a recovery boot loop so machines cannot start properly, reported The Verge.
CrowdStrike acknowledged the problem in a support note to its customers. “We have widespread reports of blue screen of death on Windows hosts, occurring on multiple sensor versions,” it said.
It said that it has identified the problem and reverted the faulty update, but that has not helped machines that have already been impacted, The Verge reported.
Several airlines in India, including Air India, IndiGo, SpiceJet and Akasa Air, reported that their systems across the network had been hurt by the outage.
No electronic terminals were available for check-in at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, the BBC reported. Passengers were being given blank boarding cards and asked to fill out the information by hand. Information on baggage tags was also being added manually.
Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union electronics and information technology minister, said that the government was in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage.
“The reason for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue,” Vaishnaw said in a social media post. “CERT [Computer Emergency Response Team] is issuing a technical advisory. NIC [National Informatics Centre] network is not affected.”
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration is assisting airlines such as Delta, United and American Airlines due to communications issues, reported The Verge.
“The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at US airlines,” Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson Jeannie Shiffer told The Verge. “Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved.”
American Airlines, the world’s biggest airline by passenger numbers, told BBC that no flights are being allowed to take off, and that it is in contact with all flights that are currently in the air.
Australia’s Melbourne airport informed its customers that it was “experiencing a global technology issue which is impacting check-in procedures for some airlines”. It advised passengers to allow extra time to check-in.
European airline company RyanAir said that there are “potential disruptions across the network due to a global third party system outage.”
At least 1,078 flights were cancelled around the world today, aviation analytics firm Cirium said. The number is likely to increase.
According to Cirium, Friday was set to be the busiest day for flight departures from the United Kingdom so far this year. The country had more than 3,200 departures scheduled – the highest number of daily departures since October 2019, reported the BBC.
In the United Kingdom, Sky News was unable to broadcast its morning news bulletins for several hours on Friday due to the outage. The broadcaster issued a message apologising for the interruption to the broadcast.
Rail companies in England were also experiencing widespread technical problems and had warned of delays. Health services in Germany and England have also been disrupted leading to only emergency services being offered in parts of the countries affected by the outage, reported the BBC.
The United Kingdom’s National Health Service said that the global outage had led to problems with the appointment and patient record system, which is causing disruption in the majority of primary healthcare services.
“The NHS has long standing measures in place to manage the disruption, including using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual phone systems to contact your GP [general practice],” it said.
Services at the London Stock Exchange were also disrupted by the technical glitch, reported Reuters.
The company said it was experiencing a third-party global technical issue that was impacting some services, although securities trading on the London Stock Exchange was not disrupted, it said in a service announcement to clients.
Banks in Germany are also facing disruptions, an unidentified spokesperson for the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft financial industry association told Reuters.
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