Banks, airports, TV stations, hotels and countless other businesses are facing widespread IT outages, forcing the grounding of flights and causing widespread disruption, after Windows machines crashed around the world.
In the early hours of Friday, Australian companies using Microsoft’s Windows operating system began reporting devices displaying Blue Screens of Death (BSODs). Shortly after, reports of outages began coming in from around the world, including the UK, the Netherlands and the US: TV channel Sky News went down and US airlines United, Delta and American Airlines issued a “global ground stop” on all flights.
Widespread Windows outages have been linked to a software update from cybersecurity giant Crowdstrike. The issues are not believed to be related to a malicious cyberattack, cybersecurity officials believe. Engineers at the company posted on the company’s Reddit forum that it has seen “widespread reports of BSODs on Windows hosts” occurring across its software, is working on the issue, and has informed a Workaround for affected systems.
So far, the incident appears to only affect Windows devices and not other operating systems. It’s not clear exactly how widespread the issues are or how long they will take to resolve. Microsoft and Crowdstrike did not immediately respond to WIRED’s requests for comment on the outage.
However, the incident could lead to losses of “millions” for affected organizations, which have had to halt their operations or business, says Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity consultant, who says Crowdstrike’s update appears to be linked to its Falcon Sensor product. The Falcon system is part of Crowdstrike’s security tools and can Block attacks on systemsaccording to the company.
“It reminds us of our dependence on IT and software,” Olejnik says. “When a system has multiple software systems maintained by different vendors, it amounts to putting trust in them. They can be a single point of failure, as in this case, where multiple companies feel the impact.”
This is a developing story and is updated with new information.
