A faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on Friday morning affected computers running Microsoft Windows at numerous organizations, causing a major IT outage that disrupted daily operations in multiple countries.
Many countries, including the United States, Japan, Australia, South Africa, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands, had their aviation and railway systems affected.
According to the data from the flight tracking website, as of 24:00 Eastern Time on Friday, more than 3,200 flights in the United States had been canceled, and over 11,900 flights had been delayed.
The related failures have also greatly impacted the medical systems in many countries. The American Broadcasting Corporation reported on Friday that at least 12 hospitals in the United States were affected, and some surgeries scheduled for that day were canceled.
British Sky TV quoted a spokesperson for the National Health Service on the same day that due to failures in the appointment and patient record systems, the diagnosis and treatment of many general practitioners were forced to be interrupted.
According to the organizing committee, the Paris Olympic Games credential activation service was also temporarily suspended due to the glitch.
CrowdStrike's chief executive George Kurtz confirmed in a post on X that the outage was caused by a "defect" in a content update for Windows hosts.
Kurtz also pointed out that this incident was not related to a cyber attack and said that Crowdstrike is analyzing the cause of the failure and will publish an open, transparent, and full explanation, as well as the measures taken to prevent such incidents from happening again.
According to Microsoft's latest statement on Friday, after implementing countermeasures and a period of monitoring and follow-up, it has been confirmed that all previously affected Microsoft 365 applications and services have been restored.
Liu Xiaoqian, a China Media Group reporter, also shared his personal experience at the airport during the global IT outage.
"The airport announcer said that the system crash was nationwide. If a plane took off at this time, it would not be able to communicate with the ground, which was very dangerous. Flights that had already taken off would continue to fly, while those that had not yet taken off would be completely grounded, even if some passengers had already boarded and been waiting on the plane for a long time. In comparison, I feel that waiting outside is still somewhat preferable. An hour later, the announcer broadcast again, stating that the issue was nationwide and would be difficult to resolve in the short term, advising everyone to change their tickets and go home. It was already past one in the middle of the night. I saw on social media that problems had occurred at airports all over the United States and even in Europe. At this time, many people who had been determined to wait for a miracle began to waver and started calling their families. A person sitting next to me said on the phone that he didn't know what to do and just wanted to find someone to talk to. This was exactly what I felt," Liu said.
"I thought things would definitely get worse if I continued to wait, so I decided to spend money to find a hotel near the airport and wait. Unexpectedly, the nightmare was not over yet. I finally got a taxi to the hotel in the dark, but the front desk said their system had crashed and they could not check me in. They asked me to try other hotels. You can imagine how I felt at that time -- after midnight, I couldn't book a room on the app for that night. However, a kind employee allowed me to move in first and suggested I book a room for the next day on the app, although he couldn't provide a room key because it could not be registered in the system," he said.
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Microsoft outage disrupts daily operations worldwide