NEW YORK (AP) — Much of the world faced online disarray Friday as a widespread technology outage affected companies and services across industries — grounding flights, knocking banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air.
CrowdStrike has said a fix is on the way. Still, chaos deepened hours after the problem was first detected.
Here’s what you need to know.
Live updates: Follow AP’s latest coverage of the global outage.
How did Friday’s ‘blue screen’ outage emerge?
Friday’s disruptions began when a faulty update was pushed out from CrowdStrike for one of its tools, “Falcon.” In a statement about the ongoing situation, the company said the defect was found “in a single content update for Windows hosts” — noting that Mac and Linux systems were not impacted.
Long lines formed at airports in the U.S., Europe and Asia as airlines lost access to check-in and booking services during peak summer travel — disrupting thousands of flights. Banks in South Africa and New Zealand reported outages impacting payments. Some news stations, particularly in Australia, were unable to broadcast for hours. And hospitals had problems with their appointment systems, leading to delays and sometimes cancelations for critical care, while officials in some U.S. states warned of 911 problems in their areas.
“It is an ‘all our eggs are in one basket’ situation,” Craig Shue, professor and computer science department head at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said in emailed commentary. “This lets us make sure our ‘basket’ is high quality: the software provider tries to identify threats and respond to them quickly. But at the same time, if anything goes wrong and the basket fails, we have a lot of broken eggs.”
What is CrowdStrike?
CrowdStrike is a U.S. cybersecurity company that provides software to companies around the world and across industries. It bills itself as being the globe’s most advanced cloud-based security technology provider.
“We stop breaches,” the cybersecurity company says on its website.
According to its website, CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 and launched in early 2012. It listed on the Nasdaq exchange five years ago. Last month, the Austin, Texas, company reported that its revenue rose 33% in the latest quarter from the same quarter a year earlier — logging a net profit of $42.8 million, up from $491,000 in the first quarter of last year. It reported having 29,000 subscribing customers.
Is there a fix?
Disruptions on Friday continued hours after CrowdStrike first identified the issue. But both the company and Microsoft said that they’re working to get systems back online.
In an emailed statement, CrowdStrike said that it was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts” — adding that a fix “had been deployed” for the identified issue.
CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz later apologized. “We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” he wrote on social media platform X.
Microsoft spokesperson Frank X. Shaw said that the company was “actively supporting customers to assist in their recovery.” Both CrowdStrike and Microsoft are also appearing to engage IT personnel on official online channels, such as Reddit.
Gartner analyst Eric Grenier noted that those affected should make sure they’re talking to trusted organizations as they work towards recovery. “Attackers will definitely prey on organizations as a result of this,” he said.
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