Microsoft Outage Explained: How A Snag At Cybersecurity Firm CrowdStrike Brought The World To A Halt

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A massive global outage affecting Microsoft services has led to widespread disruptions across various sectors, including aviation, retail, banking, and media.The outage has caused numerous Windows computers to suddenly shut down, creating significant operational challenges worldwide.The issue has affected critical services and led to considerable inconvenience for millions of users.

Global impact on critical services as Microsoft outage rages
In Australia, Virgin Australia reported a complete halt to all incoming and outgoing flights at Sydney Airport due to the IT outage.Melbourne Airport also faced check-in delays, citing a “global technology issue” impacting its services.

Melbourne Airport is experiencing a global technology issue which is impacting check-in procedures for some airlines. Passengers flying with these airlines this afternoon are advised to allow a little extra time to check-in. Please check with your airline for flight updates. pic.twitter.com/pFjOjReMKX

— Melbourne Airport (@Melair) July 19, 2024
In the US, American Airlines, Delta, and United flights have been told to stay on the ground as a global Microsoft outage has sparked travel chaos for passengers.In India, three major air carriers—IndiGo, SpiceJet, and Akasa Air—are experiencing significant technical issues due to the Microsoft outage.These disruptions are affecting essential operations such as booking, check-in, and flight updates, causing delays and inconveniences for passengers.IndiGo issued a statement: 

We’re currently facing a technical issue in providing updates on flight disruptions. Our team is actively working to resolve this issue. We regret any inconvenience caused and will update you once the issue is resolved. Thank you for your patience and cooperation.

The outage has not been confined to the aviation sector. Across the world, various critical services have been disrupted.The media sector was also hit hard. Sky News’s breakfast show was replaced by archive footage due to the outage, and British news channel Sky News went off the air.According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the outage disrupted ABC News 24, affecting its ability to broadcast news packages.Retail and financial services were not spared either. Woolworths supermarkets in Australia experienced checkout system crashes, preventing customers from completing transactions.The London Stock Exchange also reported disruptions, impacting financial operations.
 What caused this tech chaos? Cybersecurity experts quickly pointed to a problem with CrowdStrike, a piece of antivirus software, which appeared to be causing computers to crash.Troy Hunt, a cybersecurity researcher, highlighted the widespread nature of the issue on X, stating, “something super weird happening right now” as individuals worldwide reported their Windows computers showing the “blue screen of death” and entering recovery mode.Senad Arun, founder of the cyber research company Imperum, described the incident as “CrowdStrike Doom’s Day”.CrowdStrike acknowledged the issue on their website, noting, “CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows related to the Falcon Sensor.”According to Microsoft’s Service Health Status updates, the preliminary root cause of the issue is 

A configuration change in a portion of our Azure backend workloads (that has) caused interruption between storage and compute resources, and which (has) resulted in connectivity failures.

These failures affected “downstream (and dependent) Microsoft 365 services.”CrowdStrike Engineering, which works with Microsoft, identified a content deployment related to the issue and reverted the changes.The company provided steps for resolution for affected Windows users, which included booting Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment and deleting a specific file in the CrowdStrike directory.
 Microsoft response and ongoing mitigationMicrosoft has been actively working to mitigate the impact of the outage. In a detailed thread on X, the company stated,“We’re working on rerouting impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion. We’re still observing a positive trend in service availability while we continue to redirect impacted traffic.”The company noted that services were seeing “continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions.”Microsoft also emphasized its commitment to addressing the lingering impact on the remaining Microsoft 365 apps that are in a degraded state.The global Microsoft outage has underscored the vulnerability of interconnected systems and the wide-ranging impact of such disruptions.From aviation and retail to banking and media, the outage has affected critical services, causing significant inconvenience for millions of users worldwide.As Microsoft and CrowdStrike work to resolve the issue, businesses and consumers are hoping for a swift resolution to restore normal operations.More By This Author:Is Intel The Smarter Investment As Nvidia Peaks? Here’s Why
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