Microsoft outage: Chaos could last for DAYS with 5000 flights grounded in battle to fix world’s biggest ever IT meltdown
THE chaos sparked by the Microsoft outage could last for days – with 5,000 flights grounded in the world’s biggest ever IT meltdown.
A botched update from cyber firm CrowdStrike knocked Microsoft Windows computers offline around the world yesterday.
The meltdown caused dozens of flight and train cancellations across the UK and brought parts of the NHS to a standstill.
Experts warned that it could take weeks for systems to fully recover – with more flight delays and cancellations expected this weekend.
London Gatwick, Heathrow Airport, Manchester Airport and Belfast International Airport have all said they could be affected.
The airports said passengers should check with airlines for any delays or cancellations before travelling over the weekend.
A whopping 167 flights scheduled to depart UK airports were axed yesterday – with a far greater number delayed.
Another 171 flights due to land in the UK were cancelled following the technical glitch.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium said 5,078 flights – or one in 20 of those scheduled – were cancelled globally yesterday.
Disruption to pharmacy services is likely to continue through the weekend, even when systems are back online.
Pharmacies across the UK have been swamped with a backlog of medicine deliveries.
National Cyber Security Centre expert Professor Ciaran Martin said the chaos could drag on for days.
He said: “The underlying problem is fixed and the fixes are being implemented.
“Some industries can recovery quickly. But others like aviation will have long backlogs.
“That said, I’d be surprised if we were still facing serious problems this time next week.”
Experts warned users to “remain vigilant” against potential scams as systems recover.
CrowdStrike and the NCSC are warning people to be especially wary of phishing scams exploiting the confusion.
The NCSC said: “Note that an increase in phishing referencing this outage has already been observed.
“Opportunistic malicious actors seek to take advantage of the situation.”
The outage knocked around 10 billion US dollars (£7.8 billion) off CrowdStrike’s market value.
CrowdStrike apology in full
IN a statement, the IT firm said:
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.
Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This was not a cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
We are referring customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous public updates on our blog.
We further recommend organisations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.
Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.
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.
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.
Below is the latest CrowdStrike Tech Alert with more information about the issue and workaround steps organizations can take.
We will continue to provide updates to our community and the industry as they become available.
The largest financial markets in the US and UK fell during the trading session as other companies were also affected.
Many devices showed a so-called “blue screen of death” as they got stuck in an endless cycle of trying to reboot themselves.
The outage caused disruption in “the majority of GP practices”, NHS England said.
Ambulance services also reported increased pressure on 999 and NHS 111 services.
Many were flooded with calls from patients who were unable to contact other NHS providers because of the IT issues.
Across England, GP surgeries reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records.
In the UK, Sky News briefly went off air on Friday morning – with unflappable presenters later going back to basics with paper scripts.
Britain’s biggest train company Govia Thameslink Railway warned passengers to expect disruption because of “widespread IT issues”.
Around the world, banks, supermarkets and other major institutions reported computer issues disrupting services.
Many businesses were unable to take digital payments or access key databases.
Microsoft deputy chief information security officer Ann Johnson described the outage as “a very major issue”.
Johnson said she could not predict how long it would take to get all customers back online.
What sparked the tech meltdown?
By Ashley Armstrong, Business Editor
A minor tech tweak has been blamed for the world’s biggest IT outage.
Experts have warned that yesterday’s disaster highlights how reliant modern society is on technology and how vulnerable it is to glitches.
The “blue screen of death” on many Microsoft Windows computers was caused by a software update from a US cyber security firm called CrowdStrike.
Microsoft said that Windows devices running the CrowdStriek software “may encounter a bug check (BSOD [blue screen of death]) and get stuck in a restarting state”.
CrowdStrike, valued at over $80 billion before yesterday’s crisis, counts 29,000 companies as customers including schools, hospitals, supermarkets, airlines and banks.
The firm was quick to confirm the chaos was not caused by a cyber attack, but an update to its software.
When CrowdStrike’s software, called Falcon Sensor, was sent out automatically to its customers there was an error in the coding which meant Microsoft computers would not restart. The issues did not impact Apple Mac computers.
George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s chief executive, said the cause of the problems was a “defect found in a single content update for Windows”. CrowdStrike’s security software is meant to detect viruses and online threats and is meant to block them. Yesterday it said that it was rolling back the update to the software.
Shares in the Austin, Texas based company plunged by 14 per cent as soon as US markets opened, wiping $10 billion (£7.7 billion) off the company in an instant.