A faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Friday morning has affected computers running Microsoft Windows at a multitude of organizations, causing a major IT outage that has grounded flights and substantially paused business and banking globally.
U.S. federal airspace officials announced a nationwide ground stop of air traffic on Friday due to the outage. Airlines and airports across Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, China, Japan, India, and Singapore also reported problems with check-in and ticketing systems, resulting in flight delays.
CNN reported that more than 2,000 flights in the United States were canceled and over 5,300 flights delayed.
Sky News on Friday reported that the outage has affected the network system of Ryanair in Ireland and reminded its passengers to check in at least three hours early. It also reported that passengers at Edinburgh Airport could not use the automatic service to scan their boarding cards as the screen showed "service offline".
Some railway companies in the UK were also affected by the outage, it reported.
The organizing committee of the Paris Olympics said that they have experienced limited impacts from the global technology outage that struck Friday morning. The committee has launched an emergency plan. The Olympic ticketing system was not affected, and the Olympic torch relay continued as usual.
The outage has also caused a significant failure in Microsoft's cloud computing services.
The chief executive of CrowdStrike, George Kurtz, confirmed in a post on X that a "defect" in a content update for Windows hosts had caused the outage.
"All of CrowdStrike continues to work closely with impacted customers and partners to ensure that all systems are restored," Kurtz said on X.
US cybersecurity firm's faulty update causes major global IT outage
