Global cyber outage grounds flights, hits media, financial, telecoms
In paragraph 6 corrects timing of Crowdstrike alert to Friday
July 19 (Reuters) -A global tech outage was disrupting operations in multiple industries on Friday, with airlines halting flights, some broadcasters off-air and everything from banking to healthcare hit by system problems.
American Airlines AAL.O, Delta Airlines DAL.N, United Airlines UAL.O and Allegiant Air ALGT.O grounded flights citing communication problems. The order came shortly after Microsoft MSFT.O said it resolved its cloud services outage that impacted several low-cost carriers, though it was not immediately clear whether those were related.
"A third party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide, including at United. While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports," United said in a statement. "Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations."
Australia's government said outages suffered by media, banks and telecoms companies there appeared to be linked to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike CRWD.O.
According to an alert sent by Crowdstrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, the company’s “Falcon Sensor” software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the “Blue Screen of Death”.
The alert, which was sent at 0530 GMT on Friday, also shared a manual workaround to rectify the issue.
A Crowdstrike spokesperson did not respond to emails or calls requesting comment.
There was no information to suggest the outage was a cyber security incident, the office of Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.
The outages rippled far and wide.
The travel industry was among the hardest hit with airports around the world, including Tokyo, Amsterdam, Berlin and several Spanish airports reporting problems with their systems and delays.
International airlines, including Ryanair RYA.I, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned of problems with their booking systems and other disruptions.
In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, multiple reports from medical officials on X said, while Sky News, one of the country's major news broadcasters was off air, apologising for being unable to transmit live.
Banks and other financial institutions from Australia to India and South Africa warned clients about disruptions to their services, while LSEG Group LSEG.L reported an outage of its data and news platform Workspace.
Amazon's AWS cloud service provider said in a statement that it was "investigating reports of connectivity issues to Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS."
It was not immediately clear whether all reported outages were linked to Crowdstrike problems or there were other issues at play.
Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise
Related Assets
Latest News
Disclaimer: The XM Group entities provide execution-only service and access to our Online Trading Facility, permitting a person to view and/or use the content available on or via the website, is not intended to change or expand on this, nor does it change or expand on this. Such access and use are always subject to: (i) Terms and Conditions; (ii) Risk Warnings; and (iii) Full Disclaimer. Such content is therefore provided as no more than general information. Particularly, please be aware that the contents of our Online Trading Facility are neither a solicitation, nor an offer to enter any transactions on the financial markets. Trading on any financial market involves a significant level of risk to your capital.
All material published on our Online Trading Facility is intended for educational/informational purposes only, and does not contain – nor should it be considered as containing – financial, investment tax or trading advice and recommendations; or a record of our trading prices; or an offer of, or solicitation for, a transaction in any financial instruments; or unsolicited financial promotions to you.
Any third-party content, as well as content prepared by XM, such as: opinions, news, research, analyses, prices and other information or links to third-party sites contained on this website are provided on an “as-is” basis, as general market commentary, and do not constitute investment advice. To the extent that any content is construed as investment research, you must note and accept that the content was not intended to and has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and as such, it would be considered as marketing communication under the relevant laws and regulations. Please ensure that you have read and understood our Notification on Non-Independent Investment. Research and Risk Warning concerning the foregoing information, which can be accessed here.
