Fix delivered for tech outage that caused chaos worldwide

The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has deployed a fix for a software problem that triggered one of the biggest tech outages the world has ever seen, affecting industries ranging from airlines to banking and healthcare worldwide, the company’s CEO said on Friday.

All Windows computers affected by the failure will need to be manually rebooted, CrowdStrike said.

Microsoft said separately that it had fixed the underlying cause for the outage of its 365 apps and services including Teams and OneDrive, but residual impact was affecting some services.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said in a post on the social media platform X.

In one communication to a customer reviewed by Bloomberg News, CrowdStrike’s technical support team advised that rebooting the affected system up to 15 times may be required.

In Thailand, airlines operating out of major airports including Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang were especially hard hit. With their check-in systems down, staff had to adopt manual check-in, resulting in long queues of frustrated passengers.

Suvarnabhumi airport announced on its Facebook page that core reservation and check-in systems were impacted by a global information technology (IT) issue affecting airlines worldwide.

At Don Mueang, Thai AirAsia said a failure of the Microsoft Azure cloud system had knocked out ground service operating systems. Airports of Thailand on Friday afternoon took to Facebook to advise passengers to allow an additional four hours for check-in.

Siriraj Piyamaharajkarun Hospital (SiPH), a private hospital operated by the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, also announced on its Facebook page that its IT system was experiencing delays in providing services.

Those with appointments on Friday would be contacted by hospital staff, the hospital said.

At least one securities brokerage in Bangkok also experienced problems, according to local media reports.

The issue at CrowdStrike stemmed from a defect found in a single content update for Microsoft Windows hosts, Kurtz said, adding that Mac and Linux hosts were not affected by the issue.

The resulting IT outage disrupted operations at companies across multiple industries, with major airlines halting flights, some broadcasters going off-air and sectors ranging from banking to healthcare hit by system problems.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our company,” Kurtz said in an interview with the US television network NBC.

“Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up and it’ll be operational,” he said. “It could be some time for some systems that won’t automatically recover.”

CrowdStrike’s “Falcon Sensor” software was causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the “Blue Screen of Death”, according to an alert sent by CrowdStrike earlier to its clients and reviewed by Reuters.

In the United States, three major airlines — American, United and Delta — grounded all flights. Banks and financial institutions from Australia and India to South Africa warned clients about disruptions to their services.

Do you like the content of this article?