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

[Jerm]

Originally Posted by Wisconsin_Chief

Weird, everything seems fine around here.

Right...this entire thing is just odd....

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Wisconsin_Chief

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!

I've already forgiven anyone ever associated with a playoff loss.
He can now be named.
We're going to win not only 3 but 4 straight super bowls.

Everything we always wanted, and then some, has already come to pass. We are a dynasty and will likely be THE NFL dynasty from here on out.
This run will not be rivaled in our life times.
If you aren't happy with this you just aren't a happy person. That's a you problem...

[Mosbonian]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

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.

The temptation to go back to work in the line I was in has been crazy. I have had calls since the end of March but just re-routed them to people I have mentored that I feel could do the task just as well.

I can't truly emphasize how much more relaxed I am since I retired.....and the amount of stress I got rid of.

My BP has gotten down to the levels that my Cardiologist loves...

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by 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

Traffic reduction happens every night. It'd be far more interesting to see a day-over-day comparison.

[Mosbonian]

Originally Posted by Rausch

I've already forgiven anyone ever associated with a playoff loss.
He can now be named.
We're going to win not only 3 but 4 straight super bowls.

Everything we always wanted, and then some, has already come to pass. We are a dynasty and will likely be THE NFL dynasty from here on out.
This run will not be rivaled in our life times.
If you aren't happy with this you just aren't a happy person. That's a you problem...

For those of us who had to endure the longevity of mediocrity we did, this is the gifted pay out. I can't say I won't get frustrated when a Chief's player makes a bonehead play, but I will never be as angry as I used to me.

Not to be sentimental...but the one person I want to find once I cross thru the Pearly Gates is my dad. I will finally get that hug for the SB wins I had hoped we would share together.

[|Zach|]

I was reading about this going into work and was dreading it all, but its impact has been more minor than expected.

Which is weird we use pretty much the entire suite of Microsoft 365 and are heavily dependent on OneDrive.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Wisconsin_Chief

Weird, everything seems fine around here.

Originally Posted by Jerm

Right...this entire thing is just odd....

There's definitely some exaggeration on impacts happening here. It's a WIDESPREAD issue, but the fix is relatively straightforward. I'm sure most orgs got their servers back online first and are now working through thousands of consoles in priority order. It'll take a bit to get everything caught back up, but it's not like the world is grinding to a halt today.

[Bearcat]

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.

Yeah, it's so easily mitigated by having a rollout strategy that includes beta testers in the wild, so if you're some huge corporation, have 1% of your PCs auto update a week prior (or even a day, anything) to everything else.

It's also crazy some of these companies would accept auto updates across the board and just hope the vendor doesn't **** you over.. I wonder how many of these companies auto update Microsoft patches and so forth, too.

I've never worked with Crowdstrike, but unless there's zero option for manual updates, a lot of CIOs should be reviewing their own change control procedures, even if the bulk of the blame is on Crowdstrike since they could easily set aside x% of devices per company to rollout to first.

[Wisconsin_Chief]

Originally Posted by Rausch

I've already forgiven anyone ever associated with a playoff loss.
He can now be named.
We're going to win not only 3 but 4 straight super bowls.

Everything we always wanted, and then some, has already come to pass. We are a dynasty and will likely be THE NFL dynasty from here on out.
This run will not be rivaled in our life times.
If you aren't happy with this you just aren't a happy person. That's a you problem...

Yep, even if it were to end instantly, we’re already one of the greatest dynasties ever. There is nothing left to be mad about no matter what. Exactly like you said, anyone that can still find fault is just looking for misery.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Mosbonian

The temptation to go back to work in the line I was in has been crazy. I have had calls since the end of March but just re-routed them to people I have mentored that I feel could do the task just as well.

If I worked with the recruiter in the past, I'm doing the same thing. Referring them to my former colleagues that can do this kind of work.

[Dartgod]

What a ****ing shit show. We have a pc as a print server in most of our 160-ish offices and most are ****ed.

[Jewish Rabbi]

Brazzers still up

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by Dartgod

What a ****ing shit show. We have a pc as a print server in most of our 160-ish offices and most are ****ed.

Thoughts and prayers to you. We use their competitor and have no issues.

But this impacting our staff as one of our main medical records hosted vendors is completely offline. Not good.

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Mosbonian

Not to be sentimental...but the one person I want to find once I cross thru the Pearly Gates is my dad. I will finally get that hug for the SB wins I had hoped we would share together.

I feel you. Mine passed in 2016. I really wish he could have watched Mahomes...

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Jewish Rabbi

Brazzers still up

And so am I now.

Oh well, it helped Friday pass a helluva' lot faster...