Worldwide tech outage ground flights, disrupts online services

Washington : Flights were grounded, banking and medical services were disrupted, while some media outlets were thrown offline following a massive global tech outage that was felt across the world on Friday.

The outage was blamed on a bug in a software update sent by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that develops and sells software used to guard against hackers and cyberattacks. It affected systems using Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

An estimated 1,400 flights were disrupted around the world.

The White House said that President Joe Biden had been briefed on the outage and “his team is in touch with CrowdStrike and the impacted entities”.

It added that the administration was “engaged across the interagency to get sector-by-sector updates throughout the day and is standing by to provide assistance as needed”.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” George Kurtz, the Chief Executive of CrowdStrike, wrote in a post on X.

“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 organisations to ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers,” he added.

Microsoft said in a post on X, “We're investigating an issue impacting the users' ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services.”

Many US airlines, including American, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines, issued ground stops for all their flights early on Friday due to communication problems, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

“A third-party software outage impacted technology systems worldwide,” American Airlines said on its website, adding, “Our flights have resumed and we’re working diligently to minimise disruptions. We’ve issued a travel waiver so you can change your trip online or in the American app.”

Air India posted on X, “Airport travel systems across the world have been impacted due to a tech outage and this may affect your travel plan. If you are flying with us today, we request you to check the status of your flight before heading to the airport.”