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Flights were canceled and television stations went offline due to major computer outages.
On Friday, my Windows PC started displaying mysterious “blue screen” errors and became unusable.
As a result, problems occurred at many of the world’s largest companies, including airlines, television stations and banks.
Cybersecurity companies say the issue has been discovered around the world and appears to be linked to a glitch in a cybersecurity update that has rendered computers unable to boot.
Sky News was taken offline, flight check-ins were unavailable at airports, trains were disrupted and banks warned that customers may not be able to make payments.
Tracking website Downdetector recorded outages and problems at a number of companies, including Delta Airlines, Visa, Mastercard, Lloyds Bank, Santander, Amazon, Ryanair, Sky News, Ladbrokes, BT and Microsoft Teams – although it is not clear whether all of these are related to PC issues.
Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines have all grounded flights in the US, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Air and rail operators around the world have been hit by problems.
Govia Thameslink Rail, Britain’s busiest rail company which runs the Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern services around London, said it was experiencing “widespread IT issues”, while Ryanair blamed a “global third-party IT outage” and advised travellers to arrive “at least three hours before their flight”.
The London Stock Exchange was also hit by disruption and stock markets fell due to the blackout, with the FTSE 100 down 0.8% as investors worried about the potential economic impact if the outage continued for an extended period of time.
“We are currently experiencing widespread IT issues across our network,” the company said, meaning trains may be cancelled at short notice and there may be problems providing real-time information to customers.
Sky News viewers were shown an error message saying the broadcast was down.
“We apologise for the disruption to our broadcast,” it read. “We hope Sky News broadcasts will be restored shortly.”
The trouble appears to be linked to an issue with cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which may have released a problematic update. The company said early this morning that it had identified the issue and rolled back the update, but it doesn’t appear to have fixed computers that were already affected.
In the company’s Reddit thread, representatives advise that removing the update and restarting the computer can fix the issue, though this requires an administrator to have access to the computer, which may not be possible immediately if it’s being used remotely.
Crowdstrike said it had found a solution to the problem with X, formerly known as Twitter, and clarified that it was not the result of a cyberattack.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers affected by the flaw found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not affected,” wrote George Kurtz, the company’s president and CEO. “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix is being deployed.”
“We encourage customers to consult our support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and ongoing updates on our website. We also encourage organizations to get in touch with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.”
“Our team is committed to ensuring security and stability for CrowdStrike customers.”