CrowdStrike and Microsoft: all the latest news on the global IT outage
Image: MicrosoftA global IT outage grounded flights and resulted in outages at the London Stock Exchange and other systems early Friday morning. Continue reading…
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Industries ranging from healthcare to banking, air travel, and others are struggling with a global IT outage that hit Microsoft Windows PCs and servers connected to the CrowdStrike security platform early Friday morning — and that could take a while to fully resolve.
CrowdStrike, which is a cybersecurity firm based in the US, said on Friday that a faulty update was the culprit, not a “security incident or cyberattack,” according to a post on X by CEO George Kurtz. Banks, airlines, TV broadcasters, and supermarkets had systems suddenly reboot to display a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error that might require a reboot into Safe Mode to fix.
Thousands of flights have been delayed or canceled, and some businesses are now slowly beginning to come back online. Kurtz told NBC News that it “could be some time” before systems recover.
Starbucks mobile ordering falls victim to the CrowdStrike BSOD outage
Photo by Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images
Look, in the grand scheme of the global outage that’s wreaking havoc across airlines, banks, supermarkets, TV stations, and countless businesses, being unable to order a Trenta iced coffee from Starbucks with my smartphone is a minor inconvenience. But you can add the company’s mobile ordering system to the list of casualties from this CrowdStrike BSOD situation.
The Starbucks app itself is working, but the ability to order ahead is currently unavailable at all locations. It looks as though some Starbucks shops have (temporarily) closed altogether to avoid dealing with this tech hassle until the situation improves.
The massive CrowdStrike outage might be affecting 911 in some places.
At least, according to the FCC.
What is CrowdStrike, and what happened?
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
On Friday morning, some of the biggest airlines, TV broadcasters, banks, and other essential services came to a standstill as a massive outage rippled across the globe. The outage, which has brought the Blue Screen of Death upon legions of Windows machines across the globe, is linked to just one software company: CrowdStrike.
CrowdStrike plays an important role in helping companies find and prevent security breaches, billing itself as having the “fastest mean time” to detect threats. Since its launch in 2011, the Texas-based company has helped investigate major cyberattacks, such as the Sony Pictures hack in 2014, as well as the Russian cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016. As of Thursday evening, CrowdStrike’s valuation was upwards of $83 billion.
Here’s how IT admins are fixing the Windows Blue Screen of Death chaos
Photo by Anthony Kwan / Getty Images
IT admins around the world are scrambling to fix a major issue with Windows computers today after a faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike knocked thousands of PCs and servers offline with a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error. While CrowdStrike has fixed the update that originally caused the problems, many systems are still offline, with banks, airlines, supermarkets, and TV broadcasters struggling to cope without their machines.
The fix, for many, won’t be easy. IT admins are still trying to use an initial workaround provided by CrowdStrike, which involves booting Windows systems into Safe Mode and deleting a system file:
Not now, Intel.
I love a scheduled social media post right in the middle of a major PC outage. IT admins certainly aren’t enjoying the CrowdStrike 2024 PC era.
Major Windows BSOD issue takes banks, airlines, and broadcasters offline
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Thousands of Windows machines are experiencing a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) issue at boot today, impacting banks, airlines, TV broadcasters, supermarkets, and many more businesses worldwide. A faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike is knocking affected PCs and servers offline, forcing them into a recovery boot loop so machines can’t start properly. The issue is not being caused by Microsoft but by third-party CrowdStrike software that’s widely used by many businesses worldwide for managing the security of Windows PCs and servers.
Australian banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters first raised the alarm as thousands of machines started to go offline. The issues spread fast as businesses based in Europe started their workday. UK broadcaster Sky News was unable to broadcast its morning news bulletins for hours this morning and was showing a message apologizing for “the interruption to this broadcast.” Ryanair, one of the biggest airlines in Europe, also says it’s experiencing a “third-party” IT issue, which is impacting flight departures.
