Photo: New Delhi Airport / Photo and Report : Courtesy – mint
New Delhi: Windows users around the globe have been stuck in the ‘recovery’ stage after a massive outage following a recent Crowdstrike update. Reports suggest that the outage has affected airports, companies, and government offices across the world.
Crowdstrike has acknowledged the issue in a recent support page where it states that the recent crashes on Windows are related to problems with the Falcon sensor. It stated, “CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor. Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bugcheck\blue screen error related to the Falcon Sensor. Our engineering teams are actively working to resolve this issue and there is no need to open a support ticket,” the company added.
According to a report by Reuters, the outage raised concerns about the vulnerability of the world’s interconnected technologies. Businesses also face questions about how to avoid future blackouts triggered by technology meant to safeguard their systems. The outage also raised concerns that many organizations are not well-prepared to implement contingency plans when a single point of failure such as an IT system, or a piece of software within it, goes down, said the report.
Indigo requests customers to check flight status before heading to the airport and issues a travel advisory. Indigo has said that customers might continue to face delays and flight disruptions. The aircraft operator requested its flyers to check flight status before heading to the airport. It had also issued a travel advisory earlier, advising customers to avoid the airport or contact center unless there was an urgent travel need.
According to AP, in Australia, national news outlets such as public broadcaster ABC and Sky News Australia were unable to broadcast on TV and radio for several hours. Some news anchors resorted to broadcasting online from darkened offices, with computers displaying blue error screens. Internet and phone service providers were also impacted.
Moreover, in the U.S., KSHB-TV in Kansas City, Missouri, broadcasts Scripps News instead of local news until approximately 5:35 AM EST, according to the station’s website. IT teams and engineers worked overnight to fix the issue. Other local stations owned by Scripps experienced similar problems, but Scripps spokesman Michael Perry stated in an early Friday email that 90% of the stations managed to broadcast local news.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella has addressed the concerns of the tech community worldwide. In a post on X, he stated, “Yesterday, CrowdStrike released an update that began impacting IT systems globally. We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.”
CEO Satya Nadella reacts to the disruption, saying, ‘We are aware and working on it.’
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella has addressed the concerns of the tech community worldwide. In a post on X, he stated, “Yesterday, CrowdStrike released an update that began impacting IT systems globally. We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.”
CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. announced on Friday that all Windows computers impacted by a global IT failure will need a manual reboot, reported Bloomberg. CEO George Kurtz explained in a CNBC interview that the issue stemmed from a content bug or update, which has since been rolled back, as per the wire.
He apologized to customers, noting that while some systems might take a few hours to come back online, others could take longer.
Kurtz also mentioned potential manual steps required and the company’s efforts to automate those steps.
CrowdStrike’s technical support team, in a communication reviewed by Bloomberg News, stated that affected systems might need up to 15 reboots
