One of the biggest IT outages in history has hit companies around the world, from airlines to financial services and media groups, causing significant disruption.
Thousands of workers in cities from Tokyo to London were unable to log on to their computers on Friday, affecting businesses and public services such as transport and emergency services.
The outage was blamed on a security update from US-based group CrowdStrike that caused a problem with Microsoft’s Windows. Computers and servers are affected, suggesting that millions of computers may need to be repaired to fix the problem.
“I don’t think it’s too early to call it: it’s going to be the biggest IT outage in history,” Troy Hunt, a prominent security consultant, said in a post on social media. “This is basically what we all feared about Y2K, except this time it actually happened.”
Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, wrote on social media: “Biggest IT failure of all time” followed by the words “Microsoft” next to an angry emoji face.
In China, some workers welcomed the early start of the weekend after their employers told them to go home. “Thank you Microsoft for an early holiday” was briefly the most searched phrase on the microblogging site Weibo on Friday afternoon, where users posted images of blue error screens.
Australian businesses were the first to warn of problems, with the operations of retailers including Woolworths and 7-Eleven hit. Sydney Airport said its operations were affected by a “global technical outage”.
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In Europe, airlines and airports warned of disruption on what was expected to be the busiest day for UK departures since October 2019.
The US Federal Aviation Administration said Delta, United and American Airlines had requested ground flights for the takeoff. The three largest US carriers later resumed flights, but nearly 4,000 flights were delayed or canceled, according to aviation data provider FlightAware.
“This is a very, very disturbing illustration of the fragility of the world’s basic internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, a professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and former head of the National Cyber ​​Security Centre.
In an online post earlier Friday, Microsoft said it is aware of an “issue” affecting Windows devices with the CrowdStrike Falcon agent that can “get stuck in a restart state.” This appears to have contributed to the problems affecting some of its cloud computing customers.
“We can confirm that the update in question was pulled using CrowdStrike,” Microsoft added.
CrowdStrike is one of the world’s largest providers of “end-to-end” security software used by companies to monitor security issues across a range of devices, from desktops to payment terminals.
CrowdStrike shares fell 13 percent and Microsoft fell 0.8 percent in early trading in New York.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said Friday morning that the company is “working with customers affected by a flaw found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”
“This is not a security incident or a cyber attack,” Kurtz said. “The problem has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
Just before midday UK time, Microsoft said the “root cause has been fixed” in its cloud services, although “residual impact continues to affect” some software.
However, the incident is far from resolved, with several sectors reporting ongoing issues on Friday:
Financial services
Trading at banks and brokers across Europe was hit by the outage as traders tried to see if they could complete trades.
JPMorgan’s trade execution systems were affected and the ION trading group faced problems, according to people familiar with the matter.
The London Stock Exchange Group said trading remained intact, but its news service faced problems, with only a few reports published on Friday morning until the service resumed in the early afternoon.
Metro Bank said its payments and customer services were hit by an IT outage that caused global disruption.
German insurer Allianz said some of its systems and phone lines were unavailable. British Admiral, a major motor insurer, said it had “a problem with our phone lines which is affecting our ability to deal with customer enquiries”. Italy’s Generali told the Financial Times it was also affected.
Transportation
Airlines, airports and train lines around the world struggled to maintain control of their operations.
Flight cancellations continued throughout the day, with some of the worst problems in the US, where United, Delta and American Airlines grounded flights early Friday morning. United and American have since resumed service.
As of 6 a.m. ET, 512 flights from the U.S. had been canceled, nearly 2 percent of total departures and “significantly more than usual at this time of day,” according to aviation data provider Cirium.
In Europe, Dutch carrier KLM said the problems had “impossible to handle flights” and that the airline had suspended “most” of its operations.
In total, about 1,390 flights have been canceled worldwide, with the number growing by the hour, Cirium said. British Airways, Ryanair and Heathrow continued to operate but warned customers of possible service disruptions.
Media, consumer and sport
Sky News was forced to cut the program on Friday morning but has since resumed broadcasting. David Rhodes, executive chairman of Sky News, told X that the British broadcaster “was unable to broadcast live television this morning”.
Manchester United were one of a number of football clubs in England and Scotland to be forced to postpone ticketing for their matches, blaming “a global Microsoft server outage affecting many systems, including ours”.
Organizers of the Paris Olympics say a global IT outage has hit their IT operations just a week before the city is due to welcome millions of visitors.
Health and industry
Most GP practices in the UK have been affected by a problem with EMIS, the patient appointment and record system, which is forcing practices to use non-digital methods of communicating with patients and providing services. The ability of UK pharmacies to dispense vital medicines has been affected.
In Germany, the Schleswig-Holstein University Hospital, one of the largest in Europe, was forced to cancel all elective surgeries and close its outpatient clinics.