On Friday, a global technical glitch disrupted operations in multiple industries, causing airlines to ground flights, broadcasters to halt broadcasts, and impacting businesses from banks to healthcare facilities, highlighting the uncertainty brought about by reliance on software from a few vendors.
Major U.S. airlines such as American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Airlines announced flight suspensions due to communication malfunctions.
“A third-party software issue is impacting global computer systems, including those of United Airlines,” United Airlines said in a statement. “While we work to restore these systems, all aircraft will be grounded at their origin airports; flights already in the air will continue to their destinations.”
Recently, Microsoft resolved a cloud service disruption affecting several budget airlines.
The U.S. tech giant, influenced by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, experienced a significant outage which also affected many other enterprises.
The Australian government indicated that local media, banks, and telecommunication companies were affected by issues seemingly related to technical problems at global cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
Warnings issued by CrowdStrike to customers and reviewed by Reuters indicated that their “Falcon Sensor” software was causing Windows system crashes, leading Microsoft users worldwide to encounter the infamous “Blue Screen of Death”.
This alert was issued at 5:30 GMT on Friday. CrowdStrike stated that the issue believed to have caused the malfunction was not a security incident or cyberattack and shared a set of manual steps to rectify the issue in the alert.
Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness’s office posted on X website stating that there was no information indicating that the network disruption was related to cybersecurity.
In an update released by Microsoft at 5:40 a.m. Eastern Time, they acknowledged that the CrowdStrike issue led to their systems being stuck in a continuous restart loop.
“We can confirm that CrowdStrike has rolled back the affected update. Customers still experiencing issues should reach out to CrowdStrike for further assistance.”
According to CNBC, Microsoft previously stated that after issues with Azure services and Microsoft 365 suite in the U.S. Midwest, their cloud services had been restored. A spokesperson told Dow Jones that these were two separate and unrelated issues, one related to Azure and the other to CrowdStrike.
They added that for the CrowdStrike issue, they “anticipate a solution soon”.
At 5:53 a.m. ET, Microsoft’s stock fell approximately 2% in pre-market trading.
Reports by Reuters state that the travel industry suffered the most in the network outage event, with airports worldwide, including Tokyo, Amsterdam, Berlin, and some airports in Spain, reporting system issues and flight delays.
Major international airlines in Europe, including Ryanair, warned of problems in their booking systems due to the outage causing further disruptions.
Multiple medical officials reports on X website indicated that in the UK, the appointment system used by doctors was offline, while “Sky News,” a major news media outlet in the country, stopped broadcast and apologized to viewers for the inability to livestream.
Banks and other financial institutions from Australia to India and South Africa issued warnings to customers about service interruptions, and the London Stock Exchange Group reported malfunctions in their data and news platform Workspace.
AWS, a cloud service provider under Amazon, stated in a release that they were investigating user-reported Windows EC2 instance and AWS Workspaces connectivity issues.
At Hong Kong airport, hundreds of passengers queued at the counter of budget airline HK Express for manual boarding procedures as the company stated its global e-commerce system was impacted by the Microsoft service disruption.
Timmy Lo, a 29-year-old hospital staff member, stated that he and his girlfriend had been waiting in line for over two hours to check in at the HK Express counter. Flight delays meant they would arrive at their hotel in Tokyo early Saturday morning.
He said, “I’m tired because I have to keep queuing, and we don’t know when we can go in.”
The Paris Olympic organizers stated in a release that due to the network outage, the arrival of some Olympic delegations, as well as uniform and accreditation deliveries, were delayed.
“It has not impacted ticket sales or the torch relay. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure operations continue at the highest level,” organizers said.