WELLINGTON, New Zealand (news agencies) — A global technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack — and that a fix was on the way. The company said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
But hours after the problem was first detected, the disarray continued — and escalated.
Long lines formed at airports in the U.S., Europe and Asia as airlines lost access to check-in and booking services at a time when many travelers are heading away on summer vacations. News outlets in Australia — where telecommunications were severely affected — were pushed off air for hours. Hospitals and doctor’s offices had problems with their appointment systems, while banks in South Africa and New Zealand reported outages to their payment system or websites and apps.
Some athletes and spectators descending on Paris ahead of the Olympics were delayed, but Games organizers said disruptions were limited and didn’t affect ticketing or the torch relay.
DownDectector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected — although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services.
Cyber expert James Bore said real harm would be caused by the outage because systems we’ve come to rely on at critical times are not going to be available. Hospitals, for example, will struggle to sort out appointments and those who need care may not get it.
“There are going to be deaths because of this. It’s inevitable,’’ Bore said. “We’ve got so many systems tied up with this.”
Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
CrowdStrike said in an emailed statement that the company “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”
It said: “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
The Austin, Texas-based company’s Nasdaq-traded shares were down nearly 15% in premarket trading early Friday.
A recording playing on its customer service line said, “CrowdStrike is aware of the reports of crashes on Microsoft ports related to the Falcon sensor,” referring to one of its products used to block online attacks.
Meanwhile, governments, officials and companies across the world scrambled to respond.
New Zealand’s acting prime minister, David Seymour, said on X that officials in the country were “moving at pace to understand the potential impacts,” adding that he had no information indicating it was a cybersecurity threat.
The issue was causing “inconvenience” for the public and businesses, he added.
On Friday morning, major delays reported at airports grew, with most attributing the problems in booking systems of individual airlines.
In the U.S., the FAA said the airlines United, American, Delta and Allegiant had all been grounded.
Airlines and railways in the U.K. were also affected, with longer than usual waiting times.
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