by Daisy Luther, The Organic Prepper:
A massive technology outage is wreaking havoc worldwide. Early reports blame the chaos on an issue with Microsoft, the dominant operating system for desktop computers and the software Falcon from Crowdstrike. We’ve been assured this isn’t a cyberattack, but a software glitch affecting the OS of computers across the world.
Here are some of the ways this outage is causing global chaos today.
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Flights grounded
American Airlines, United, Frontier, and Delta made a drastic move, grounding all flights.
The ground stop impacted all flights from the airlines, regardless of their destination, the Federal Aviation Administration said. As of mid-Friday morning, more than 600 flights into, out of or within the United States had been canceled, according to FlightAware.com.
The outage does NOT impact flights that were in the air when it occurred. The problem is with the other processes, such as check-in, luggage, and booking.
American Airlines has since resolved the problem, and its flights are resuming. But for tens of thousands of other travelers, chaos and uncertainty still reign in the airports.
As well, in New York City, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has also had its systems go offline.
Banking disrupted
Around the world, operations have ground to a halt at many major banks, including:
- Commonwealth Bank in Australia
- Capitec in South Africa
- Certain operations at Barclay’s in the UK
- Banks in Israel, which have not been named at the time of this post
Some of the issues have been the inability to use ATMs, access online banking, and self-checkout registers. As well, the London Stock Exchange website is unable to update.
911 outages
According to Newsweek, 911 services in many parts of the country have been affected.
Emergency services and access to 911 operators have been affected in multiple states as a major IT outage causes chaos worldwide.
Alaska State Troopers posted on Facebook on Thursday night: “Due to a nationwide technology-related outage, many 911 and non-emergency call centers are not working correctly across the State of Alaska.”
They added that in the case of emergency, alternative numbers can be contacted.
New Hampshire also experienced a service outage overnight, but it has since been restored, according to the Department of Safety, local ABC affiliate WMUR reported.
In Phoenix, Arizona, emergency services have faced further issues. As some computers stopped working, dispatchers had no access to the internet or their usual systems, and were manually writing down information for first responders, according to local news outlet The Arizona Republic.
Downdetector has also noted a spike in reports about 911 services.
Medical services interrupted
Health systems and hospitals around the world have reported issues with their systems as well. Israeli Health Services has reported problems and NHS has said that most general practitioner offices in the UK have been affected.
News broadcasts down
In some areas, major mainstream media outlets are at a complete standstill.
Australian and British broadcasters SBS, Network 10, the ABC and Sky News Australia and Sky News UK were all taken off air.
What caused all of this?
CNN reports that the issue originated with a software update issued by CrowdStrike. It is specifically affecting Falcon, one of CrowdStrike’s main cybersecurity software products.
CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software — used by numerous Fortune 500 companies — detects and blocks hacking threats. Like other cybersecurity products, the software requires deep-level access to a computer’s operating system to scan for those threats. In this case, computers running Microsoft Windows appear to be crashing because of the faulty way a software code update issued by CrowdStrike is interacting with the Windows system.
George Kurtz, the CEO of CrowdStrike says that they have identified the problem and deployed a fix. Here’s the statement he released to the media:
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.
The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.
One little glitch caused mass chaos.
Regardless of the cause, this certainly goes a long way toward reminding us how much our systems are reliant on computers. While they do make many things far easier, many businesses are entirely unable to function without them.
It’s just a glimpse into the disaster we could face with a significant cyber attack or other service outage.
Hopefully, this will be shortlived but also provide a cautionary tale for the businesses affected.
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