A major global outage impacting computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system has resulted in the grounding of several major global airlines, disrupted television news broadcasts, and pushed banking services offline early on Friday.
Key Facts
The outage has been blamed on a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which has resulted in many Windows PCs experiencing the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) while booting. In an update on its cloud service Azure’s status page, Microsoft said it is aware of the issue affecting machines running Windows, and noted it is affecting systems running CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, nearly all major American carriers—including Delta, American, and United—have been forced to temporarily ground all their flights due to the outage. The U.S. Emergency Alerts System said 911 lines in multiple states were also down.
Major carriers and airports in other parts of the world—like Air India, KLM, Hong Kong International Airport, Berlin Brandenburg Airport, and others—have also reported disruptions, forcing some of them to rely on manual check-ins. The London Stock Exchange group said its workspace platform was also facing an outage preventing it from publishing statements while banks and payment terminals in Australia were also affected.
Sky News U.K. and Sky News Australia’s live broadcasts were impacted due to the outage but the network is back on air in the U.K. now. CrowdStrike’s shares tanked nearly 16.8% to 5.49 in pre-market trading, while Microsoft’s stock slipped around 2.3% to 0.28.
Crucial Quote
CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz issued a statement on X saying: “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts…This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
This is a developing story.