Businesses worldwide are experiencing outages, including Windows “blue screen of death” errors on their computers, in what has already become one of the most widespread IT disruptions in recent years. The problems are affecting companies across various sectors, from banks, food chains and brokerage houses, to news organizations, railway networks and airlines.
The issue appears to be impacting firms — and numerous customers — globally. The London Stock Exchange, Edinburgh airport, and Ryanair reported facing disruptions in their services, as has the Hong Kong airport, some Indian airlines as well as news channels in India. Ryanair blamed a “third-party IT issue.”
Several businesses and security experts have pointed fingers at the security firm CrowdStrike for the outages. Australian energy company AGL has blamed an update from the firm. The firm’s software is used widely across enterprises for managing security on Windows devices and servers. Crowdstrike’s shares were down more than 14% in premarket trading on Friday.
Indian airlines IndiGo, Akasa, and SpiceJet reported that their check-in systems at some of the airports weren’t functional anymore, warning passengers that their flights might be delayed as a result. The Delhi airport said a global outage had knocked down some of its services. South China Morning Post is reporting that the Hong Kong airport is also having problems, “leaving the international airport in chaos.”
UK news broadcaster Sky News faced trouble broadcasting live this morning due to the outage, the firm’s executive chairman David Rhodes tweeted. New Zealand Herald reported that banking services in the country were affected by the issue, too. Boarding scanners at UK airports are facing disruption too, according to Sky News.
Many customers have reported being unable to restart their computers due to the issue. This outage comes shortly after Microsoft confirmed service problems with its Microsoft 365 apps late on Thursday, which affected several airlines including Delta and United. Microsoft’s services status page says it has resolved all the issues.
A post on Crowdstrike’s support forums acknowledged the issue, saying the company had received reports of crashes related to a content update to the Falcon Sensor.
The security firm didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A moderator of the CrowdStrike subreddit said the company was aware of “widespread reports” of blue screen errors on Windows devices across multiple versions of its software. The firm was investigating the cause, the message read.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates. Ram Iyer contributed to this report.
