Source: Europa Press News / Getty / Crowdstrike
A massive global IT outage is crippling businesses and making lives miserable.
If you're a business running Microsoft Windows-based systems, the last 48 hours haven't been good for you, and your IT department is definitely under stress.
Banks, airports, TV stations, healthcare organizations, hotels and other businesses were greeted by BSODs (Blue Screens of Death).
Blue Screens of Death hit the giant screens in Times Square.
What caused the global upheaval?
The outage affected computers running the Windows operating system and was the result of a bug in an update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
In the early hours of Friday, companies in Australia with computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system began experiencing blue screens of death.
Not long after the issue appeared, there were many reports of outages from the UK, India, Germany, the Netherlands and the US.
TV stations like Sky News was offline and US airlines United, Delta and American Airlines issued a “global ground stop” to all flights.
CrowdStrike says the outage was not malicious and, through its CEO, issued a statement on the matter.
Per Wired:
Hours after the issues began to appear, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz issued a statement about the outages, saying the company found a “flaw” in a Windows update it issued. “This is not a security incident or a cyber attack,” Kurtz said he said. “The problem has been identified, isolated and a fix has been developed.” In the statement, Kurtz confirmed that Mac and Linux hosts are not affected by the update and said that its customers should refer to its support portal.
