Global cyber outage grounds flights, hits banks, telecoms, media
Send a link to a friend
[July 19, 2024]
(Reuters) - A global tech outage was disrupting operations
across multiple industries on Friday, with airlines halting flights,
some broadcasters off air and services from banking to healthcare hit by
system problems.
While major U.S. airlines - American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United
Airlines - grounded flights, other carriers and airports around the
world reported delays and disruptions early on Friday.
Banks and financial services firms from Australia to India and Germany
warned customers of disruptions.
In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, multiple
reports from medical officials on X said, while Sky News, one of the
country's major news broadcasters was off air, apologising for being
unable to transmit live, and soccer club Manchester United said on X
that it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.
The former head of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre Ciaran
Martin told BBC Radio that an update to a product offered by global
cyberscurity firm CrowdStrike appeared to be affecting operating systems
based on Microsoft's Windows Operating System.
Microsoft's MSFT.O cloud unit Azure said it was aware of the issue that
impacted virtual machines running Windows OS and the CrowdStrike Falcon
agent getting stuck in a "restarting state," amid an ongoing global
outage.
"We're aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from
a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is
forthcoming," a Microsoft spokesperson said.
According to an alert sent by CrowdStrike to its clients and reviewed by
Reuters, the company’s "Falcon Sensor" software is causing Microsoft
Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the
"Blue Screen of Death".
The alert, which was sent at 0530 GMT on Friday, also shared a manual
workaround to rectify the issue.
Over half of Fortune 500 companies used CrowdStrike software, the U.S.
firm said in a promotional video this year.
A Crowdstrike spokesperson did not respond to emails or calls requesting
comment.
There was no information to suggest the outage was a cyber security
incident, the office of Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator
Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X. A British government source
also told Reuters there was nothing to suggest foul play.
[to top of second column]
|
Passengers wait at Barajas Airport, as Spanish airport operator Aena
on Friday reported a computer systems "incident" at all Spanish
airports which may cause flight delays, in Madrid, Spain July 19,
2024. REUTERS/Elena Rodriguez
"The world grinding to a halt because of a global IT meltdown shows
the dark side to technology," AJ Bell investment analyst Dan
Coatsworth said.
"The severity of the problem boils down to how long it lasts. A few
hours' disruption is unhelpful but not a catastrophe. Prolonged
disruption is another matter," he said.
The outages rippled far and wide.
Airports in Singapore, Hong Kong and India said the outage meant
some airlines were having to check in passengers manually.
Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, one of Europe's busiest, said it was
affected, while airline Iberia said it had been operating manually
at airports until its electronic check-in counters and online
check-ins were reactivated. It said there had been some delays but
no flight cancellations.
Air France-KLM said its operations were disrupted.
The Dutch foreign affairs ministry told Dutch press agency ANP it
had been affected. A spokesperson was not immediately available for
comment.
While there were reports of companies gradually restoring their
services, analysts weighed the potential of what one called the
biggest ever outage in the industry and the broader economy.
"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," said Ajay Unni, CEO of StickmanCyber, one of Australia's
largest cybersecurity services companies.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Tomasz Janowski; Editing
by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
[© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|