Global IT Outage Caused by CrowdStrike Issue Could Take ‘Weeks’ to Resolve as Full Impact is Revealed, UK News Reports
According to an expert, fixing a global IT outage that caused more than 5,000 flights to be grounded could take “weeks” as the extent of the software bug’s impact becomes apparent.
The outage spread globally on Friday morning after a software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused many Microsoft Windows PCs to crash with a “blue screen of death.”
This issue led to travel cancellations and affected accessibility to NHS systems.
CrowdStrike’s founder later confirmed that the outage was due to a bug in the update and not a cyber attack, as some had suspected.
Follow live: Major services affected by global outage
Blue screens showing error messages at Chicago O’Hare Airport. Pic: AP
George Kurtz mentioned that a fix has been implemented, but it will take “some time” before all systems are fully restored to normal. An industry expert also cautioned that a complete recovery could take “weeks.”
Adam Leon Smith of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, stated: “The fix will need to be applied to numerous computers worldwide.
“So, if computers are experiencing blue screens and endless loops, the process of rectification could be more complex and time-consuming, spanning days and weeks.”
As the outage unfolded early on Friday, airlines worldwide warned of delays and eventually had to cancel flights on what was expected to be the busiest day of the year for UK air travel.
Passengers faced long queues in terminal buildings, with reports of three-hour waits at some UK airports due to system failures in check-in processes, eGates, and departure boards.
Read more:
What we know so far
Services affected by the outage
Passengers at Stansted Airport waited outside the terminal on the UK’s hottest day of the year so far. Pic: PA
Passengers queue by the Ryanair check-in desk at Stansted. Pic: PA
By 8pm, 5,078 flights had been grounded worldwide – which represents 4.6% of all scheduled flights globally, as reported by an aviation analytics company.
Cirium Data also stated that 167 flights scheduled to depart from UK airports had been canceled – accounting for 5.4% of departures – along with 171 inbound flights.
Furthermore, staff resorted to manual boarding passes and whiteboards to display departure information in an effort to keep operations running smoothly.
The NHS experienced disruptions as “the majority of GP practices” in England and two thirds in Northern Ireland were affected, while South Western Railway reported failures in their ticket vending machines.
Customers also reported issues with supermarket payments, online banking, and communication systems like Microsoft Teams.
What has CrowdStrike said?
During an interview on NBC’s Today Show on Friday, CrowdStrike CEO Mr. Kurtz mentioned: “We sincerely apologize for the impact on customers, travelers, and anyone affected by this.”
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IT outages: CrowdStrike CEO apologises
“Many of our customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up and operational because we fixed it on our end,” he continued.
“Some of the systems that aren’t recovering, we’re working with them, so it could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover, but it is our mission to make sure that every customer is fully recovered.”
