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A worldwide Windows glitch has taken much of the world’s infrastructure offline.
Flights were grounded, and hospitals across the world have reported a variety of problems. TV channels have been taken off air. Everything from banks and payment companies to airlines and train companies said that they would see delays and technical issues.
Eerie scenes played out in New York as giant screens in the world-famous Times Square went dark, and across the US complications with local hospitals and law enforcement services were reported.
The problem is related to a global update sent out by CrowdStrike, a cyber security company that makes a product that aims to keep computers safe.
Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz later issued a statement reassuring customers that the outage was not “a security incident or cyber attack.”
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” Kurtz said, in a statement. “We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.”
According to the aviation analysts at Cirium, one in 25 flights globally had been cancelled on Friday.
President Joe Biden is receiving “constant updates” on the situation, according to a senior administration official.
Key Points
- Microsoft says it is ‘investigating’ problem
- More than 2,000 flights in US canceled. 30,000 plus delayed globally
- ‘The largest IT outage in history'
- Cyber security software linked with outage
- Complicated workaround found
Read our full report on the outages here
You can read our full report on the outages here.
World brought to a halt by drastic Microsoft outage
Flights have been cancelled and TV stations have been taken online in a drastic computer outage.
Andrew Griffin19 July 2024 09:38 1721434855What is CrowdStrike
According to its website, CrowdStrike is a global cybersecurity leader, and “has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk — endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data.”
Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and advanced AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection and remediation, elite threat hunting and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities.
The Falcon platform delivers “rapid and scalable deployment, superior protection and performance, reduced complexity and immediate time-to-value.”
Class action lawsuits expected following the global outages
Class action lawsuits could follow swiftly from the global power outages following billions worth of estimated lost profits, loss of date and economic opportunities, a legal expert has said.
Digital privacy and business law attorney Adam Grant, shareholder at the Los Angeles-based law firm Grant Shenon, said that legal liability, if any, would come down to the actual reason for the crash.
“Software updates are very common. They frequently cause issues. It is not below the standard of care for an update to impact other systems. However, this has been described as the largest computer crash in history,” Grant said, in a statement shared with The Independent.
“I expect there will be great focus on the quality control steps taken to minimize any impact before sending out the update. The claims would likely be based on negligence arising out of what the software company should have known regarding the update.
“I do expect class actions will be filed within a short period of time primarily based on such a theory. The damages will be in the billions and include lost profits, loss of data and loss economic opportunities and reputation repair.”
Mike Bedigan20 July 2024 00:20 1721429455Outage chaos hits Starbucks mobile ordering
The Starbucks mobile app, normally a smooth system for customers to pick up grab-and-go coffee orders, has also been thrown into chaos by the global outages.
“Starbucks is among those companies experiencing impacts due to a widespread third-party systems outage, resulting in a temporary outage of our mobile order ahead and pay features,” Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson said in a statement emailed to NBC News.
“We continue to welcome and serve customers in the vast majority of our stores and drive-thrus and are doing everything we can to bring all systems online as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
Tech outage halts surgeries, medical treatments across the US
Alison Baulos says her 73-year-old father was about to head to a Kentucky hospital for open-heart surgery when it was abruptly canceled early Friday morning.
His was one of the many operations and medical treatments halted across the country because of a global technology outage.
Read the full story here:
Mike Bedigan19 July 2024 23:25 1721426455Long queues for Ryanair at Stansted
Here at Stansted Airport there are large crowds in the departures hall, far greater than we’d expect even for such a busy travel day. The vast majority appear to be at Ryanair where there are long queues for check-in, snaking right through the airport. Ryanair has been reporting problems with online check-in and asking passengers to check-in at the airport if needed, suggesting that they arrive at Stansted three hours before their flight. Security lines are long but moving efficiently; time through security is under 30 mins
Crowdstrike ‘understands gravity’ of situation
In a statement issued on Friday morning Crowdstrike apoligized to all those affected by the outage, saying it understood “the gravity of the situation”.
“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on,” the statement read.
“We assure our customers that CrowdStrike is operating normally and this issue does not affect our Falcon platform systems. If your systems are operating normally, there is no impact to their protection if the Falcon Sensor is installed.”
Mike Bedigan19 July 2024 21:45 1721420455
Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of internet performance monitoring company Catchpoint CEO, said that the global outage on Friday was a “stark reminder” of the potential infallibilty of the modern digital age.
“The scale of today's global IT outage is unparalleled in recent history,” Daoudi said, in a statement shared with The Independent.
“It serves as a stark reminder that our entire world is powered by digital experiences and that the internet is neither magically infallible nor inherently resilient. This is a reminder you need to manage and control change: Don't blindly update software or change configuration.
“At any moment, even the smallest oversight or piece of unpreparedness can bring systems—and consequently businesses—down.”
Daoudi continued: “Preparation and visibility are key, not just to prevent such outages but to mitigate the vast financial risks they pose.
“The fallout from today’s event will likely be measured not just in the disruption of services but in exponential financial losses worldwide, potentially amounting to millions or even billions in lost revenue.
“It highlights a critical vulnerability: our increasing dependency on digital infrastructure can translate into staggering costs when that infrastructure fails. Kudos to all the IT professionals and teams are working tirelessly to resolve this issue and restore services.”
Mike Bedigan19 July 2024 21:20 1721419255Judicial system operations affected in California
Court and jail operations were affected by the global outage in the state of California.
Los Angeles County Superior Court exprienced “significant system-wide connectivity issues” wile further south in San Diego County inmate bookings were limited.
“The Court is experiencing significant system-wide connectivity issues that are impacting the Court’s ability to conduct business,” the Los Angeles Superior Court said in an email, adding hearings with parties expecting to appear remotely will be rescheduled.
In San Diego, jail bookings were limited for a few hours while department officials employed back up systems.
“We were able to resolve the challenges relatively quickly, thanks to our exceptional team of professionals in our Sheriff’s Data Services and Detentions Processing Divisions,” the San Diego County Sheriff said, per CNN.
“These men and women worked closely with our Sheriff’s Communications Center, as well as our patrol and detentions deputies, to ensure essential services were not interrupted.”
Elsewhere in California, “all 911, public safety communications and critical infrastructure is functioning as expected,” the state Office of Emergency Services said in a social media post.
“At this time, there are no reports of impacts to life-safety public services in California,” the governor’s office said.
Mike Bedigan19 July 2024 21:00 1721418055In pictures: Chaos at North American airports
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