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Global cyber shutdown delays flights, hits banks, telecoms and media
(In paragraph 6 corrects timing of Crowdstrike alert to Friday)
(Reuters) – A global technology outage was disrupting operations across industries on Friday, with airlines halting flights, some broadcasters offline and everything from banking to healthcare hit by system problems.
American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines and Allegiant Air have suspended flights citing communications issues. The order came shortly after Microsoft said it had resolved its cloud services outage that impacted several low-cost carriers, though it was not immediately clear whether they were related.
“A third-party software outage is impacting computer systems around the world, including at United. While we work to restore these systems, we are grounding all aircraft at their departure airports,” United said in a statement. “Flights that have already departed are continuing to their destinations.”
The Australian government said outages suffered by media, banks and telecommunications companies appeared to be linked to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.
According to an alert sent by Crowdstrike to its customers 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 05:30 GMT on Friday, also shared a manual workaround to fix the issue.
A Crowdstrike spokesperson did not respond to emails or calls seeking comment.
There was no information to suggest the outage was a cybersecurity incident, the office of Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.
Outages spread everywhere.
The travel sector was one of the worst affected, with airports around the world including Tokyo, Amsterdam, Berlin and several Spanish airports reporting issues with their systems and delays.
International airlines including Ryanair, Europe’s biggest airline by passenger numbers, have warned of problems with their reservation systems and other disruptions.
In Britain, appointment systems used by doctors were offline, according to multiple reports from medical officials on X, while Sky News, one of the country’s main news broadcasters, was offline, apologizing for not being able to broadcast live.
Banks and other financial institutions from Australia to India and South Africa have warned customers of disruptions to their services, while LSEG Group reported an outage of its Workspace data and news platform.
Amazon’s AWS cloud service provider said in a statement that it was “investigating reports of connectivity issues with Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS.”
The story continues
It wasn’t immediately clear whether all of the reported outages were related to Crowdstrike issues or whether there were other problems at play. (This story has been corrected to reflect the change in the timing of Crowdstrike’s alert to Friday, in paragraph 6)
(Reporting by Reuters agencies; writing by Tomasz Janowski; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)