Businesses around the world have been hit by a massive outage this morning, as Microsoft Windows machines fail to boot up. Ironically, the cause is believed to be a faulty update in Crowdstrike security software.
Airports, hospitals and media companies are among the businesses affected, whose Windows devices produced a “blue screen of death” on booting up today.
Some airlines have grounded flights, while airports have reverted to whiteboards to notify passengers of what’s going on in the absence of communications systems.
The National Health Service in the UK has also ground to a halt, with doctors, hospitals and pharmacies unable to get online.
The Swiss Federal Office for Cyber Security has stated that a faulty update or misconfiguration by CrowdStrike is behind the worldwide IT outage.
Crowdstrike is known as a top-tier endpoint detection and response software. It appears that a new patch or update sent out has caused these major issues on customers’ systems.
It is believed that it could be affecting devices from servers to PCs, point of sale device and ATMs.
Experts say recovery can only be done manually as the machine needs to be in safe mode, and so no automation is possible.
Alan Stephenson-Brown, CEO of Evolve, comments: “News of a global IT outage that has caused problems at airlines, media and banks is a timely reminder that operational resilience should be at the forefront of the business agenda.
“Demonstrating that even large corporations aren’t immune to IT troubles, this outage highlights the importance of having distributed data centres and rerouting connectivity that ensures business can continue functioning when cloud infrastructure is disrupted.
By prioritising both contingency planning and preventative measures, IT systems can be protected. I urge business leaders to seriously appraise the systems they have in place to identify potential vulnerabilities before they find themselves the subject of the next IT outages headline.”
UPDATE:
George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, says a fix for the issue has been pushed out, and the company is working with customers to resolve it.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” he says.
“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 ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”