Microsoft IT outage live: Crowdstrike admits ‘flaw’ behind Windows issue as chaos hits airports, hospitals

You can read our full outage report here.

George Kurtz, president and CEO of CrowdStrike, has finally addressed the issue. It says that this is not a cyber attack and that a patch has been deployed for the issue.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers affected by the flaw found in the single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not affected,” he wrote.

“This is not a security incident or a cyber attack. The problem 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 full and ongoing updates on our website. We further recommend that organizations ensure that they communicate with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.

“Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike’s customers.”

The outage affected rail companies across the UK. The Rail Delivery Group, which represents train operators, said in a statement: “Train operators have been affected by ongoing global IT issues which may result in service changes and cancellations at short notice, which will also affect information screens and real-time services at stations . We apologize for any customers experiencing disruption to their journeys today; staff are working hard to resolve issues as soon as possible.

“Most trains are still running across the country and rail staff will be able to provide the latest information to customers in person. You can also visit the National Rail Inquiries website for the latest updates.”

In what now appears to be a very prescient warning, internet father Vint Cerf warned just this week that the internet is fragile. This was among his many warnings about the threats his creation faces when it reaches its 50th birthday.

Dan Card, from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT and cyber security expert, said: “People should remain calm while organizations respond to this global problem. It affects a very wide range of services from banks to shops to air transport.

“This looks like a bug in a regular security update, rather than any form of ‘mega cyber attack,’ but it’s still causing problems worldwide and will likely require a large number of people to take manual steps to fix it.

“Companies should make sure their IT teams are well supported as this is going to be a busy and highly stressful weekend for them as they help customers of all kinds. People often forget about the people who are running around fixing things.”

Peter Buttigieg, the US transport secretary, announced overnight that his department would hold all airlines “to their responsibility to meet the needs of passengers”.

(His post specifically calls out Frontier — but that’s probably because it was posted early in the outage, before it was clear in full.)

The outage led Washington, DC to delay the opening of its subway service. It usually opens at 5am but is still closed.

Some London Stock Exchange services were disrupted on Friday due to a global IT outage that affected companies around the world.

The LSE said securities trading was unaffected by the outage, but its regulatory intelligence service was down on Friday morning.

A spokesperson said: “We are currently experiencing a technical issue with a third party which is impacting some of our services.

“There is no impact on the trading of securities on the London Stock Exchange. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and will continue to provide updates to our customers.”

Meanwhile, payments giant Visa said it was unaffected by the outage, meaning payment processing in its systems continues as normal.

A Visa spokesperson said: “There is no indication of any impact on Visa’s ability to process payments from this issue.

“Our systems are working normally.

“We are aware of reports of people being unable to make payments and are working with our financial institution clients to understand any impact on their cardholder and merchant services.”

London’s markets fell after news of an IT failure that caused problems for banks, supermarkets, airlines and other major institutions around the world.

The FTSE 100 fell 0.8% in early trade as investors were spooked by the fallout, which could hit companies’ bottom lines if it lasts too long.

The problems appear to be affecting supermarket checkouts. Some report that their systems are completely offline, while others say that their payment systems have stopped working.

Here is one of the affected checkouts in Australia: