A global IT outage has affected major services including banks, airlines, healthcare and broadcasters. The massive shutdown is understood to have been caused by technology giant Microsoft and cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
Microsoft said on Friday (19 July) that it was looking into the “degraded state” of its 365 applications that are having a “lingering impact” on infrastructure, while CrowdStrike confirmed it was aware of the outages.
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In a popular Reddit thread, tens of hundreds of IT admins are posting about widespread issues in different locations. The IT admins are posting a series of steps to work around the issues, including putting a Windows machine into safe mode and deleting certain system files.
Where has been affected?
The IT outages have affected businesses and airlines across the globe.
- Many GP surgeries and pharmacies have been unable to access patient records and delivery medicines.
- Airports including Heathrow, Luton, London Gatwick and Stansted have been suffering delays and faulty check-in services.
- Airlines including Ryanair, Delta Airlines, American Airlines and Wizzair have also been impacted by the tech outage.
- Tens of train companies have suffered delays and outages, leaving passengers stranded.
- US emergency service call operators in several states have been affected.
- Broadcasters including Sky News, Sky Sports and ABC News have been impacted, with some taking whole programmes off air.
- Several banks have been impacted.
- Several retail stores including Woolworths in Australia and UK bakery chain Gail’s have been impacted.
- The London Stock Exchange news platform was impacted.
What is the tech industry saying?
Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at ESET, said the IT outage “highlights the importance of these services and the millions of people they serve.
“Businesses must test their updates and infrastructure and have multiple fail-safes in place, however large the company is.
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By GlobalData“But as often it is with the case, it is simply impossible to simulate the size and magnitude of the issue in a safe environment without testing the actual network.
“The inconvenience caused by the loss of access to services for thousands of people serves as a reminder of our dependence on Big Tech in running our daily lives and businesses.”
Ilkka Turunen, field CTO at Sonatype, said: “The widespread outages across the world affecting Microsoft Windows are due to a botched update to a piece of software called Crowdstrike, a well-regarded malware and endpoint protection tool often used by enterprises and many companies across the world.
“In terms of technical details, the update causes a blue screen of death loop on any Windows machine essentially making it boot and crash on an infinite loop. Making it worse is the fact that there are a significant number of Windows machines that the update was auto-installed on overnight. There are workarounds that customers of theirs will apply, but it seems to be very manual.
“It is definitely a supply chain style incident – what it shows is that one popular vendor botching an update can have a huge impact on its customers and how far a single well-orchestrated update can spread in a single night. It is not yet clear if the contents were due to malicious reasons, but it shows how quickly targeted attacks on popular vendors could spread.”
