HOUSTON, Texas – A major internet outage affecting Microsoft is disrupting flights, banks, media outlets and companies across the world, with problems continuing hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.
Airlines and airports in the United States, Europe, Australia, India and elsewhere were reporting problems, with some flights grounded. Retail outlets, banks, railway companies and hospitals in several parts of the world were also affected by what appeared to be an unprecedented internet disruption.
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The reason? Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity company that does business around the world through software sales and investigations of major hacks, said its customers were impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. They indicated that this is NOT a security incident or cyberattack.
What is CrowdStrike?
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that secures the most critical areas of risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity, and data – to keep customers ahead of today’s adversaries and stop breaches, according to the company’s website.
In hindsight, CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity vendor specializing in software that helps companies detect and prevent hacks. Many of the world’s Fortune 500 companies, including major global banks, healthcare providers, and energy companies, rely on their solutions.
As an “endpoint security” firm, CrowdStrike uses cloud technology to provide cyber protections to internet-connected devices. This approach contrasts with other cybersecurity methods that focus on securing backend server systems.
What caused this issue?
Cybersecurity programs like CrowdStrike frequently and automatically update themselves to account for new tactics that malicious hackers have discovered. And there’s always a slight risk that any software update will be incompatible with other programs.
CrowdStrike’s update should have been routine, but an error in its code conflicted with Windows and proved catastrophic.
The company’s CEO, George Kurtz, said Friday morning on the “TODAY” show that while some customers would see their computers fixed automatically, others would require manual work to fix.
“The system was sent an update, and that update had a software bug in it and caused an issue with the Microsoft operating system,” Kurtz said. “Our systems are always looking for the latest attacks from these adversaries that are out there.”
NBC News contributed to this report.
When will the issue be fixed?
According to a statement posted on the company’s website, it’s working with the customers impacted.
CrowdStrike said the “issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We…
— George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 19, 2024