A major IT outage is in full swing across the globe thanks to faults with Microsoft Windows. A bad update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike is confirmed to be causing thousands of PCs and servers worldwide to go offline and unable to reboot, causing chaos for broadcasters, airlines and many other businesses.
CrowdStrike, a US firm based in Austin, Texas put out a statement on the probem its software has caused.
“Crowdstrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” said George Kurtz, CrowdStrike CEO.
“Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
The company’s software is used to mitigate cyberattacks and to keep data safe from hacks and ransomware attacks, but an issue with its Falcon product (a “threat checker“) appears to be having the same affect on worldwide IT that some cyberattacks attempt to have.
Its customers include major investment banks across the world. The London Stock Exchange was also experiencing technical difficulties this morning.
On Friday morning, Sky News went off air in the UK due to the issues. The channel showed a message reading: “We apologise for the interruption to this broadcast. We hope to restore the transmission of Sky News shortly.” It appeared to return to limited broadcasting just before 9am with a basic set up using two news achors and minimal archival footage.
Airline Ryanair posted on X, formerly Twitter: “We’re currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a Global 3rd party IT outage which is out of our control. We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours before their scheduled departure time.”
Airports in the US, Germany, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan as well as many others reported issues, with several major airlines grounding flights.
“Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions,” Microsoft said on X this morning.
“We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the issue.”
“We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website,” CrowdStrike’s Kurtz continued.
“We further recommend organisations ensure they’re communicating with Crowdstrike representatives through official channels.
“Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of Crowdstrike customers.”
The website Down Detector, which tracks public reports of IT outages, was showing a plethora of issues on Friday morning from Microsoft, Visa, Tesco, Sky, Ryanair and Microsoft Teams.
The dodgy software update is causing Windows computers to encounter the so-called “blue screen of death” (BSOD), which leaves machines unusable and stuck in what is known as a boot loop where they don’t turn on.
The founder of the website Have I Been Pwned, which lets you know if your online accounts have been affected by data breaches, posted the below on X after being contacted for comment by media:
Cybersecurity researcher Kevin Beaumont said he believed CrowdStrike’s “bad update” was the cause of the outages.
Also in the UK, rail provider Thameslink posted on X that it was “experiencing widespread IT issues” and advised customers to seek alternative transport routes.