CrowdStrike is Fixing the Windows Error. The Australian Broadcasters Are Down With Its First-Principles Outages

Hours after the issues started to emerge, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz issued a statement about the outages, saying the company has found a “defect” in an update for Windows that it issued. “This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” Kurtz said. A fix has been deployed after the issue was identified. The statement states that Mac and Linux hosts are not affected by the update, and that its customers should refer to its support portal.

Australian banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters first raised the alarm as thousands of machines started to go offline. The issues are now spreading, as businesses based in Europe are starting their working days. UK broadcaster Sky News is currently unable to broadcast its morning news bulletins, and is showing a message apologizing for “the interruption to this broadcast.” Ryanair, one of the biggest airlines in Europe, also says it’s experiencing a “third-party” IT issue, which is impacting flight departures.

The US Federal Aviation Administration says all flights from Delta, United, and American Airlines are grounded due to a “communication issue.” Berlin airport is also warning of travel delays due to “technical issues.” The issues have also impacted many emergency call centers in Alaska.

Reddit – How Windows Users Get Their Applications and Services in the Wild: The Case of a CrowdStrike Configuration Change

In a Reddit thread, hundreds of IT admins are reporting widespread issues and the workaround steps involve booting affected Windows machines into safe mode and navigating to the CrowdStrike directory and deleting a system file. That will be a problem for some cloud-based server and for Windows laptops that do not reside in the US.

“Our entire company is offline” says one Reddit poster, while another says 70 percent of their laptops are down and stuck in a boot loop. One poster says Happy Friday. It is looking like it will be a long day for IT admins around the world.

Several issues with its Microsoft 365 apps and services are being fixed in what appears to be a separate outage. The root cause of those issues was a configuration change.

Airline flights are grounded due to widespread IT outages at banks, airports, TV stations, hotels, and countless other businesses.

Devices running Windows seem to be only being impacted by the incident so far. It is unclear exactly how widespread the issues are and how long they will take to resolve. Microsoft and CrowdStrike did not immediately respond to WIRED’s requests for comment on the outage.

A Microsoft spokesperson also issued a statement saying it is aware of the problems linked to Windows devices and the company believes a “resolution is forthcoming.”

The CrowdStrike Update: Consequences for Security, IT, and Software Systems in an Embedded-Network Environment

The update CrowdStrike has had a large impact on public services around the world. Scores of airports are facing delays and long queues, with one passenger in India sharing a hand-written boarding pass that they have been issued.

Olejnik says it reminds them of their dependence on IT and software. This is similar to trusting a vendor when there are several software systems maintained by them. They might be a single point of failure when various firms feel the impact.