Major airlines, medical facilities, businesses and police forces around the world were hit by a massive computer outage on Friday. Microsoft computers around the world showing “Blue Screens of Death” . ”
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said Friday that the outages were the result of a routine software update gone wrong, not a “security incident or cyberattack.”
CrowdStrike, which provides cybersecurity services and software to many large companies that use Microsoft systems, recently released a new software update that automatically patched some computers. But others have to be rebooted and patched manually, causing huge delays.
Microsoft announced late Friday morning that its 365 applications and services had recovered, and CrowdStrike said that a a fix has been deployed early in the morning. But some frozen computers were unable to receive the automatic CrowdStrike update, leading to persistent problems over the weekend.
Many flights have been delayed from Friday afternoon. Starbucks locations in New York had resumption of normal waiting timesdespite its mobile order ahead feature still not working.
This issue has wreaked havoc on a number of key institutions and businesses around the world, and it may take some time to resolve.
Many flights were grounded around the world and stores and broadcasters in several countries were knocked out of service. According to aviation technology company FlightAware, the technical glitch was responsible for more than half of the 1,352 flight delays and cancellations in the United States as of 8 a.m. ET Friday.
Major carriers including American Airlines, Delta Airlines And United AirlinesAll planes were grounded Friday morning due to communication problems. Passengers traveling to the United States from as far as Japan their flights were canceled. Delta ordered a “global ground stop,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, is a member of the House Cybersecurity Subcommittee.
Follow live updates on the global tech outage
George Kurtz, CrowdStrike's president and CEO, said the problems could persist.
“It may take some time for some systems to not automatically recover,” he told NBC's “TODAY” show Friday.
Kurtz said the company was “deeply sorry for the impact we have caused to customers, travelers and anyone affected by this,” adding that the issue had been resolved on its end.
“A lot of customers are rebooting the system, and it will be up and running because we fixed it on our end,” he said. “We’re just trying to figure out where the negative interaction is,” he said of the faulty update that affected Windows PCs.
Previously, in a publish on XKurtz said the outages were caused by a “flaw detected in a single content update for Windows hosts.”
