An update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike led to a major IT outage on Friday, impacting businesses around the world.
“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,” CEO George Kurtz said in a statement on X.
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
He added that customers should refer to the support portal for the latest updates and work with their CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.
“Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers,” he added.
The comments came after widespread reports of technical issues, with Microsoft users globally being hit with an error screen known as the “blue screen of death.”
Airlines, banks, telecom firms and banks were among the many businesses affected.
American Airlines, which describes itself as the world’s largest, said a technology issue was affecting “multiple carriers,” while the Dutch arm of Air France-KLM said it had been “forced to suspend most” of its operations.
Spain’s airport authority AENA, meanwhile, warned travelers to expect delays due to an “incident in the computer system,” and U.K. airline Ryanair said it was experiencing disruption as a result of a third-party IT outage. It advised passengers to arrive at the airport at least three hours before their scheduled departure time.
Beyond the travel sector, banks and financial companies around the world have reported issues, with the London Stock Exchange reporting problems with its data and news platform.
German finance giant Allianz said it was “experiencing a major outage that is impacting employees ability to log into their computers. It impacts multiple companies besides Allianz, specifically affecting the Windows login and is caused by an incident at our provider CrowdStrike.”
A Visa spokesperson said that although its ability to process payments does not appear to be affected, “we are aware of reports of people being unable to make payments and are working with our financial institution clients to understand any impact on their services to cardholders and merchants.”
NBC Universal is also being affected by the CrowdStrike outage.
See the latest updates on which companies are affected here.
Omer Grossman, CIO at cybersecurity firm CyberArk, said the damage caused by this outage will be “dramatic.”
“The glitch is due to a software update of CrowdStrike’s EDR product. This is a product that runs with high privileges that protects endpoints. A malfunction in this can, as we are seeing in the current incident, cause the operating system to crash,” he said in an emailed comment.
Getting back online is unlikely to be easy, according to Grossman.
“It turns out that because the endpoints have crashed – the Blue Screen of Death – they cannot be updated remotely and this the problem must be solved manually, endpoint by endpoint. This is expected to be a process that will take days,” he added.
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