Global Cyber Outage Grounds Flights, Hits Banks, Telecoms, Media

[BigRichard]

Someone started a DC thread but I think this is worthy for out in the Lounge. If you hadn't heard of CrowdStrike you will know them this weekend. The hospital I work for is ****ed right now. The fix is to manually go touch every PC in the hospital. We have thousands of PCs. What a nightmare for the desktop/sysadmin guys.

(Reuters) - A global tech outage was disrupting operations across multiple industries on Friday, with airlines halting flights, some broadcasters off air and services from banking to healthcare hit by system problems.

While major U.S. airlines - American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines - grounded flights, other carriers and airports around the world reported delays and disruptions early on Friday.

Banks and financial services firms from Australia to India and Germany warned customers of disruptions.

In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, multiple reports from medical officials on X said, while Sky News, one of the country's major news broadcasters was off air, apologising for being unable to transmit live, and soccer club Manchester United said on X that it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.

The former head of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre Ciaran Martin told BBC Radio that an update to a product offered by global cyberscurity firm CrowdStrike appeared to be affecting operating systems based on Microsoft's Windows Operating System.

Microsoft's MSFT.O cloud unit Azure said it was aware of the issue that impacted virtual machines running Windows OS and the CrowdStrike Falcon agent getting stuck in a "restarting state," amid an ongoing global outage.

"We're aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

According to an alert sent by CrowdStrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, the company’s "Falcon Sensor" software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the "Blue Screen of Death".

The alert, which was sent at 0530 GMT on Friday, also shared a manual workaround to rectify the issue.

Over half of Fortune 500 companies used CrowdStrike software, the U.S. firm said in a promotional video this year.

A Crowdstrike spokesperson did not respond to emails or calls requesting comment.

There was no information to suggest the outage was a cyber security incident, the office of Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X. A British government source also told Reuters there was nothing to suggest foul play.

"The world grinding to a halt because of a global IT meltdown shows the dark side to technology," AJ Bell investment analyst Dan Coatsworth said.

"The severity of the problem boils down to how long it lasts. A few hours' disruption is unhelpful but not a catastrophe. Prolonged disruption is another matter," he said.

The outages rippled far and wide.

Airports in Singapore, Hong Kong and India said the outage meant some airlines were having to check in passengers manually.

Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, one of Europe's busiest, said it was affected, while airline Iberia said it had been operating manually at airports until its electronic check-in counters and online check-ins were reactivated. It said there had been some delays but no flight cancellations.

Air France-KLM said its operations were disrupted.

The Dutch foreign affairs ministry told Dutch press agency ANP it had been affected. A spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

While there were reports of companies gradually restoring their services, analysts weighed the potential of what one called the biggest ever outage in the industry and the broader economy.

"IT security tools are all designed to ensure that companies can continue to operate in the worst-case scenario of a data breach, so to be the root cause of a global IT outage is an unmitigated disaster," said Ajay Unni, CEO of StickmanCyber, one of Australia's largest cybersecurity services companies.


https://www.usnews.com/news/world/ar...ncial-telecoms

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Lzen

I mean, have you ever met CP?

Regular season games don't matter.
At all.
Unless you're the Dolphins and can only win in 55+ degree weather...

[Rain Man]

This is where a good public relations strategy is important.

Right now the world is saying "Crowdstrike screwed up and shut down business and commerce."

Crowdstrike needs to immediately fire back with a story that says, "Crowdstrike brought all hacking and phishing to a complete halt."

[Frazod]

Am I the only one who finds the name "CrowdStrike" a bit disconcerting?

Doesn't exactly seem like a name one would give to a happy company.

[phisherman]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

This is where a good public relations strategy is important.

Right now the world is saying "Crowdstrike screwed up and shut down business and commerce."

Crowdstrike needs to immediately fire back with a story that says, "Crowdstrike brought all hacking and phishing to a complete halt."

They made systems VERY secure.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

This is where a good public relations strategy is important.

Right now the world is saying "Crowdstrike screwed up and shut down business and commerce."

Crowdstrike needs to immediately fire back with a story that says, "Crowdstrike brought all hacking and phishing to a complete halt."

I've worked with these guys for years. I found them as a whole, to be an arrogant lot. Their shit don't stink kind of thing. Thats why this happened. Pushing an update that goes this far and wide needs to be completely locked down. Tested and Retested and tested again.

There will be some bad code that wasn't tested correctly. That will get the blame But, I can almost guarantee that the cause of this was their arrogance.

[phisherman]

It's funny though. We always used to joke with our CISO that all of his team's security software slowed things down so much that they made any and all work mostly impossible. The systems are so secure that even their own users can't get them to do anything, let alone hackers.

[HayWire]

Originally Posted by BigRichard

Someone started a DC thread but I think this is worthy for out in the Lounge. If you hadn't heard of CrowdStrike you will know them this weekend. The hospital I work for is ****ed right now. The fix is to manually go touch every PC in the hospital. We have thousands of PCs. What a nightmare for the desktop/sysadmin guys.

damn it, back to the coffee can

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

I've worked with these guys for years. I found them as a whole, to be an arrogant lot. Their shit don't stink kind of thing. Thats why this happened. Pushing an update that goes this far and wide needs to be completely locked down. Tested and Retested and tested again.

There will be some bad code that wasn't tested correctly. That will get the blame But, I can almost guarantee that the cause of this was their arrogance.

Try working with network.

[RedRaider56]

Hit our company pretty hard yesterday, but seems most systems are back online today, thank goodness

[Mosbonian]

Originally Posted by Lzen

My wife got the day off due to this tech outage. I had to come to work.

One of the nice things about being retired.....I don't have to show up to work regardless.

[wazu]

KU Med was completely down this morning. Don't want to think what it was like for people in critical condition.

Also feel for anybody travelling today. Saw this graphic showing the effect on airline traffic.

12-hour timelapse of American Airlines, Delta, and United plane traffic after what was likely the biggest IT outage in history forced a nationwide ground stop of the three airlines. pic.twitter.com/wwcQeiEtVe

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) July 19, 2024

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Mosbonian

One of the nice things about being retired.....I don't have to show up to work regardless.

You just aint a whistling dixie.... heard that this week

I'd be pulling 24+ hours shift putting stuff back online. I'm getting calls from recruiters wanting me to get on a flight to their business and leave right now. Offering way too much money. But, I'm so glad to be retired. That's someone else's problem now.

[Jerm]

BREAKING: Prominent security consultant Troy Hunt says 'this will be the largest IT outage in history' and 'this is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time'

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) July 19, 2024

SPECTACULAR

[Wisconsin_Chief]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

It'll be interesting to see if GDTs calm down even a little in terms of the "it's going to be a long season!" talk in the first quarter of week 1, or if people are constantly having to remind others what happened last season.... I'd always heavily lean towards the latter, but if that Christmas Day game doesn't stick in people's memories as a lasting reminder the regular season doesn't mean shit, nothing ever will.


As far as OP, have a few systems down at the moment.

I can’t speak for all of us game day hot heads, but my days of the shit posting are definitely over. They should have been a long time ago, but that’s a different conversation. This organization is covered in Teflon for for the rest of my time as a fan. They can do no wrong ever again.

It will be very hard to ever top the postseason run we saw last year, so everything that happens from here is gravy. They’ve already surpassed anything I could have ever dreamed of, and I’m just enjoying the ride the rest of the way.

Regarding the OP, sadly I’m having no issues at work today, which sucks because it’s gorgeous here and it would have been great to blow the day off. Oh well, maybe the next one!

[Wisconsin_Chief]

Originally Posted by Jerm

BREAKING: Prominent security consultant Troy Hunt says 'this will be the largest IT outage in history' and 'this is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time'

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) July 19, 2024

SPECTACULAR

Weird, everything seems fine around here.