July 19 (Reuters) – A software update caused widespread chaos on Friday, disrupting computer systems globally. The incident grounded flights, forced broadcasters off the air, and affected services from banking to healthcare.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The update, linked to a product by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), impacted customers using Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) Windows Operating System. Microsoft later confirmed the issue had been resolved.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz stated on the social media platform X that the company was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts” and assured that a fix was being deployed. He emphasized, “This is not a security incident or cyberattack.”
Early on Friday, major U.S. airlines, including American Airlines (AAL.O), Delta Airlines (DAL.N), and United Airlines (UAL.O), grounded flights. Other carriers and airports worldwide also reported delays and disruptions.
Banks and financial services companies from Australia to India and Germany warned customers of disruptions, while traders across markets faced transaction execution problems. “We are having the mother of all global market outages,” commented one trader.
In the UK, medical officials reported on X that booking systems used by doctors were offline. Sky News, a major news broadcaster, went off the air, apologizing for the inability to transmit live. Additionally, Manchester United announced on X the postponement of a scheduled ticket release.
Microsoft’s cloud unit Azure acknowledged the issue, which impacted virtual machines running Windows OS and the CrowdStrike Falcon agent, causing them to get stuck in a “restarting state.” A Microsoft spokesperson assured, “We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming.”
CrowdStrike alerted clients early Friday that its “Falcon Sensor” software was causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display the “Blue Screen of Death.” The company provided a manual workaround to address the issue.
Over half of Fortune 500 companies use CrowdStrike software, according to a promotional video released by the U.S. firm this year. Ciaran Martin, Professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and former head of the UK National Cyber Security Centre, remarked, “This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core Internet infrastructure.”
The disruptions had far-reaching effects. Airports in Singapore, Hong Kong, and India reported manual check-ins for some airlines. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of Europe’s busiest, experienced issues, while Iberia operated manually until its electronic systems were restored, leading to some delays but no flight cancellations. Air France-KLM (AIRF.PA) also faced operational disruptions. The Dutch foreign affairs ministry reported being affected, though a spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
While some companies gradually restored services, analysts pondered the potential of what could be the biggest ever outage in the industry and its broader economic impact. Ajay Unni, CEO of StickmanCyber, one of Australia’s largest cybersecurity services companies, remarked,
“IT security tools are all designed to ensure that companies can continue to operate in the worst-case scenario of a data breach, so to be the root cause of a global IT outage is an unmitigated disaster.”
