Widespread tech outage that disrupted global flights, banks and companies now resolved: Microsoft
Posted July 19, 2024 3:46 am.
Last Updated July 19, 2024 2:22 pm.
A widespread technology outage grounded flights and knocked banks offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.
Escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.
“Multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress,” Microsoft wrote on X just before 1 a.m. Pacific. The company said hours earlier that it was continuing to reroute the affected traffic to healthy infrastructure.
By the early afternoon, Microsoft noted that the issue had been mitigated and that all previously impacted Microsoft 365 apps and services had recovered.
Toronto Pearson International Airport and Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport both confirmed that the global outage disrupted some airlines, leading to flight delays and some cancellations. They asked travellers to contact airlines directly for information.
“Flights continue to arrive and depart at the airport. As of now, Air Canada, Westjet, Sunwing, and Flair operations have not been affected,” Toronto Pearson wrote on X. “We’re still seeing issues with major American airlines [Delta, American, United] as well as Porter Airlines. If you’re travelling or picking up loved ones this morning, please check the flight status with your airline.”
Porter Airlines announced it cancelled all flights until 3 p.m. ET on Friday “due to third-party systems outages affecting global industries.”
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) reported a partial system outage of its telephone reporting system, primarily used by small aircraft passengers and boaters, which has since been resolved. It says no CBSA systems are currently affected.
The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security, Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta.
One possible cause of the internet issues that plagued airlines, companies, and governments worldwide is a tool developed by the online security firm CrowdStrike.
Israel’s Cyber Directorate was among the groups attributing the issues to CrowdStrike.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” said CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz. “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
What is Crowdstrike?
According to its website, Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company at the heart of the global outage, was founded in 2012 by Kurtz, Dmitri Alerovitch, and Gregg Marston. It claims to be the most advanced cloud-based security technology provider.
Kurtz, its CEO, said in a note on the site, “Our team of visionaries are the rebels who believe the current state of security is fundamentally broken and want to do something about it.”
CrowdStrike was listed on the Nasdaq exchange five years ago. Last month, it reported that its revenue rose 33% in the last quarter from the previous quarter and that it logged a net profit of $42.8 million, up from $491,000 in the first quarter of this year.
The company partners with Amazon Web Services and its Falcon for Defender is designed to supplement Microsoft Defender and prevent attacks.
The firm said Friday’s global disruptions occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
Brent Arnold, a Toronto-based cybersecurity and technology lawyer, called it a software update gone wrong.
“This may be, I think, the biggest scale one that we’ve seen,” said Arnold, a partner at law firm Gowling WLG.
Flights in U.S. grounded due to outage
Earlier on Friday, Windsor police reported long delays at both the Canada-United States border crossings at the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor tunnel.
More than 300 flights were delayed, and more than 100 flights were cancelled so far on Friday at the three major airports in the New York City area — JFK, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty in New Jersey.
News outlets in Australia reported that airlines, telecommunications providers, banks, and media broadcasters were disrupted as they lost access to computer systems. Some New Zealand banks said they were also offline.
Some callers to CityNews reported that outages were affecting some flights at Vancouver International Airport (YVR). The airport has not said whether any delays or other impacts were related to the global outage, though there were some disruptions due to “resource constraints” that NAV CANADA had announced earlier in the day Thursday.
In the U.S., the FAA said the airlines United, American, Delta, and Allegiant had all been grounded. Airports in Europe and Australia also reported problems. CityNews has reached out to YVR and local health authorities to confirm whether the reported impacts are related to the Microsoft issue.
Many people took to social media to say they had been affected by the outage, with some sharing that they had encountered the “blue screen of death,” which Microsoft refers to as Blue Screen errors.
This “can occur if a serious problem causes Windows to shut down or restart unexpectedly,” Microsoft explains on its website.
“These errors can be caused by both hardware and software issues,” the company adds.
