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21-07-2024
LONDON/ PARIS/ NEW YORK: IT problems will take ‘some time’ to fix while the criminals seeking to exploit mass IT outage globally, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz claimed. A massive tech failure that caused travel chaos around the world on Friday is continuing to cause some disruption.
The boss of CrowdStrike, the cyber-security firm responsible for the IT outage, warned of “bad actors” that “will try to exploit events like this”.
George Kurtz also urged CrowdStrike customers “to remain vigilant”.
The company says it has issued a fix, but experts say the manual reboot of each affected Microsoft computer will take a huge amount of work.
Thousands of flights were cancelled and banking, healthcare and payment systems were also affected in the wake of Friday’s outage.
Many airports are reporting that the issue has been solved, but the knock-on effect means thousands of travellers are still trying to make their way home, or attempting to go on holiday.
IT experts warn it could take weeks for global tech infrastructure to fully recover after a botched software update brought down systems worldwide.
The massive disruption to Microsoft systems has included flight delays and cancellations, as well as impacting hospitals, banks, supermarkets and millions of businesses.
The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the equivalent of the UK’s GCHQ, has issued an alert about hackers sending out bogus software fixes claiming to be CrowdStrike, with multiple other warnings that criminals are seeking to exploit the outage.
Adam Leon Smith of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, warned it could take “weeks” for all computers and systems to be fully restored. “In some cases, the fix may be applied very quickly,” he said but “if computers have reacted in a way that means they’re getting into blue screens… that could take days and weeks.”
It comes as more than 1,500 flights were cancelled around the world on Saturday, including at least 45 to and from the UK affecting thousands of passengers.
Key Points.
Dozens more flights cancelled as impact of Microsoft IT outage spreads into weekend. Close to 7,000 flights cancelled globally yesterday including 207 UK departures, data shows. National Lottery app and website goes down across UK amid global IT outage. ‘The largest IT outage in history’.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz says sorry to customers.
Cyber security software linked with outage.
Microsoft has faced a widespread outage, leading to disruptions across multiple services and leaving users worldwide experiencing the infamous ‘Blue Screen of Death’ (BSOD). This IT breakdown, primarily linked to an issue with CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor software, has caused significant disruptions and sparked humorous reactions online as users joked about an early weekend arrival.
CrowdStrike is a well-known cybersecurity firm, and its Falcon Sensor software is designed to protect systems from cyberattacks.
On Thursday, CrowdStrike warned users about a bug related to the Falcon Sensor that was causing Windows systems to crash with BSOD errors. Despite rolling back the problematic update, many machines remain affected.
The Blue Screen of Death, or BSOD, is a critical error screen on Windows PCs that halts all operations and displays an error message. This occurs when the system encounters a severe issue, often leading to an unexpected restart and potential data loss. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
