A massive IT outage caused major disruption across numerous industries late on Thursday and into Friday, with airlines, retail, banking, health care systems, and even broadcasters among those affected.
It later emerged that the outage was due to a defective software update rolled out by Texas-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike for its Microsoft Windows hosts.
In a post on social media at 5:45 a.m. ET on Friday, CrowdStrike chief George Kurtz said his company is “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.” He added that “this is not a security incident or cyberattack.”
Kurtz said the issue “has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed.”
He went on: “We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”
Microsoft first acknowledged the problem at around 8 p.m. ET on Thursday with a post on social media saying: “We’re investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services.”
Overnight, it became clear that the issue was affecting multiple services around the world. In the U.S., major airlines including Delta, United, and American Airlines had flights grounded, with international carriers also affected. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it is “closely monitoring” the IT outage, adding that “several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops until the issue is resolved.”
Australia’s Sydney Airport was among those with flight displays showing the dreaded blue screen of death.
Sydney Airport flight displays have all BSOD'd. #microsoft #crowdstrike pic.twitter.com/ZL9QwGdi1a
— techAU (@techAU) July 19, 2024
Tech billionaire Elon Musk described it as the the “biggest IT fail ever.”
Biggest IT fail ever
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2024
At 6:45 a.m. ET on Friday, Microsoft said in a social media post that the “underlying cause has been fixed,” but added that “residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services.”
Microsoft’s massive presence in the IT sector exposes it to global events like this. Last year, for example, widespread disruption impacted its Azure cloud computing platform, along with tools such as the Outlook email and OneDrive file-sharing apps. The company put it down to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, a malicious act that attempts to knock out a server or network by overwhelming it with incoming internet traffic.
