Blitz Bureau
Amassive Microsoft outage unleashed havoc on computer systems across the world, grounding flights and crippling banks, stock exchanges, payment systems and emergency services, on July 19. Cybersecurity platform CrowdStrike said a software update was behind the Windows crash.
Millions of Microsoft Windows users experienced ‘Blue Screen of Death’ (BSOD) error that caused their computers to shut down or restart. George Kurtz, President and CEO of CrowdStrike, stressed that this is not a security incident or cyberattack.
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” he said later. Microsoft also said that the “underlying cause for a global outage has been fixed,” but the residual impact of cybersecurity outages are continuing to affect some Office 365 apps and services.
Online services impacted
The Indian aviation sector was severely disrupted, with airports in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru among the worst hit.
In the United Arab Emirates, some online services by the Government were affected while Dubai International Airport also confirmed that its operations were temporarily impacted. UAE’s flag carrier Etihad Airways and Dubai’s flagship carrier Emirates have warned passengers to expect minor delays.
Several residents – who were used to the convenience of paying by card anywhere and everywhere in the UAE – suddenly had to scramble for cash as shops put up an uncommon sign: ‘Cash only’. The residents were assured, however, that no hacks or cyberattacks were detected amid the large-scale technical failure.
The UAE Cyber Security Council issued an alert urging users of Crowdstrike software to be wary of any software updates and the Dubai Electronic Security Centre (DESC) also issued a statement assuring that it “acted quickly to avoid any impact on Dubai government services”.
Many US airlines, including American, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines, issued ground stops for all their flights early on July 19 due to communication problems, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Public transit systems also reported temporary impacts, but for the most part, trains and buses were running as scheduled. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in Washington, DC, said its “website and some of our internal systems are currently down,” but trip-planning applications were later restored. The White House said that President Joe Biden had been briefed on the outage and “his team is in touch with CrowdStrike and the impacted entities”.
In the UK, the outage caused disruption across healthcare, transport and banking sectors. GPs struggled to access their records systems, which included online bookings. Pharmacy services, such as access to prescriptions, were also affected. The disruption led to queues at UK airports and brought some TV channels off air.
