Why is the internet down? What to know about the global Microsoft outage linked to CrowdStrike
An unprecedented global IT outage caused worldwide chaos Friday morning, leaving passengers stranded at airports, TV nļæ½ļæ½etworks unable to broadcast and banks unable to serve their custošmers.
Major cybāersecurity provider CrowdStrike issued a faulty software update that slammed users of Microsoftās Windows operating system, many of whź¦om were greeted with crashing computers and the so-called āblue screen of deathā as they were left unable to restart.
āWeāre aware of an issue with Windows 365 Cloušd PCs caused by a recent update to CrowdStrike āØFalcon Sensor software,ā Microsoft said on its .
Microsoft waršned the bug could cause computers to āget stuck inš a restarting state.ā
In an appearance on NBCās āTodayā show, Kurtz said CrowdStrike was ādeeą²ply sorryā for the oą²utage.
Computers from the US to Europe, China and beyond were impacted ź¦æby what is already considered one of the largest IT outages in history.
āThis is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time,ā prominent cybersecurity .
What happened? What caused the outage?
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz sź§ aidš the outage was the result of a flubbed software update and that a fix had been deployed. Separately, Microsoft blamed the outage on a āthird-party software providerā and said it was being addressed.
āCrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacāted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,ā Kurtz said in a lengthy X post. āMac and Linux hosts are not impacted.ā
āź¦The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed ā¦ Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security anšd stability of CrowdStrike customers,ā Kurtz added.
CrowdStrike has yet to provide many specifics. CrowdStrike reporź¦tedly warned customers that the issue was related to Falcon, a service that scans company devices for hacking attempts and other cybersecurity threats.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Austin-based company told customers in a status update that the problem was with a softwarš²e change it had pushešd via Falcon out to clientsā computers.
The company said its engineers had undonāe the change but cliź¦ents would need to use a workaround to download a fix to affected computers.
Was the outage caused by hackers or a cyberattack?
āCrowdStrike said the outage is ānot a security incident or cyberattack.ā Insteašd, it resulted from a bug in a software change it pushed to clients.
Whatās next for the public?
Both CrowdStrikāe and Microsoft have signaled a fix is already underway, though itās unclear when full service will be restored across the various industries affected by the glitch.
Kurtz couldnāt give a timeline fš¦©or when all systems would be back up and running again.
āAs you might imagine, weāve been on with š¹our customers all night,ā he said. āMany of the customers are rebooting the system and itās coming up operational because we fixed it on our end.ā
āIt āØcould be some time,ā he added. āSometimes, some systems š§wonāt automatically recover ā¦ weāre not going to relent until we get every customer back to where they were.ā
According to the Journal, some affected users may be back up and running soon, but for others, it could take weeksš¬, depending on the system in use, said Simo Kohonen, founder of Finland-based network securź¦ity company Defused.
āThe fix CrowdStrike has given is quite manual and may be difficult, in some cases, to deploy at large scale,ā he ź§told the paper.
In an interview with CNBC on Friday, CrowdStrike CEO Kurtz said the company was looking for ways to automate the fix, suggesting customers are stuck with manual fixes š¤Ŗfor now.
That means affected entities — from banks to stock exchanges to seaports — might take days to fully recover, Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey, told Bloomberg News.
āYouāll have mź§en in white vans going around to try manually fix this problem even when they put out a fix,ā Woodward told theš outlet. āThat is a big job.ā
Planes and trains halted around the world
US airports were jam-packed with stranded passengers as the software glitch ācaused flight cancellations and delays. American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines were among those that grounded flights. Europeās Ryanair said it was experiencing issues ādue to a global 3rd party system outage.ā
The MTAĀ Ā that its customer IT systems wereš ātemporarily offlineā due to the technicaš§l outage, but train and bus services were still running.
As of 8 a.m. Friday, nearly 2,700 flights had been canceled, including more than 1,000š³ flights in the US alone, the Journal reported, citing data from Cirium, ašn aviation analytics company. More than 21,000 flights around the world were delayed by midmorning Friday, the paper reported, citing flight-tracking website FlightAware.
Banks halt service
Banks and other financial services firms in Germany, Australia, India and various other countries warned customers of service outages, while traders were reportedly left unable to executeš transactions.
Banšk of America, Visa, TD Bank, Wells Fargo and many other banks were having issues as of Friday morning, .
TV networks down
UK-based Sky News was left unable to broadcast morning coverź¦age and said it was āworkšing hard to restore all services.ā News outlets in Australia also experienced issues with going live.
With Post wires