Microsoft is a company that speaks for itself. Over the decades, it has built a name for itself that is hard to tarnish. However, the company experienced a global outage that affected airports, banks, retail, and even law enforcement. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a cyberattack. What caused the Microsoft outage was a flawed update deployed by a cybersecurity attack company. The update was intended to keep their customers safe from hackers, but their plan backfired, causing that massive outage that affected over eight million devices.
The Culprit Behind the Microsoft Outage
The company responsible for the update that caused the outage is CrowdStrike. The company is based in Austin, and its cybersecurity is widely used by businesses and government agencies that run on Microsoft computers. What happened is that a defect in one of its updates for computers running on the Windows operating system is the culprit that caused that massive global Microsoft outage. It is estimated that 8.5 million computers have been affected globally. Yes, less than 1% of all Windows machines worldwide have been affected by the incident but when that outage hits economically critical places, that makes it potentially the worst cyber event in history.
What Has Been Affected by the Outage?
Airports
Flights were either delayed or canceled in the wake of this outrageous Microsoft outage. Three of the largest airlines in the United States — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines — all issued ground stops, citing communications problems. In addition, the airports from Berlin to Hong Kong have suffered tremendously, having to resort to checking in passengers manually due to the computers being down.
Banks
Some customers were unable to access their money or log in to their accounts across Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere, as operations at banks were generally affected by the outage. Additionally, the London Stock Exchange, the largest of its kind in Europe, said some of its services had been disrupted although trading had not ceased. Such an outage affecting banks has left a negative economic impact that should have been avoided.
Retail and Law Enforcement
Firstly, McDonald’s had to close some of its branches in Japan due to a cash register malfunction. Secondly, the British grocery chain Waitrose had to put up handwritten notes informing customers that it was only accepting cash due to the outage. Thirdly, Starbucks had to improvise, some branches were closed as the mobile ordering system went down, and others left their baristas to handle the aftermath of the Microsoft outage. Finally, The Alaska State Troopers agency reported issues due to the outage, warning people that 911 was temporarily out of service. The New Hampshire Department of Safety faced the same issues with their 911 system as well.
The Consequences of the Microsoft Outage
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On top of the aforementioned occurrences that took place due to the outage, experts have issued warnings about a wave of opportunistic hacking attempts linked to the outage. They also urged people to be vigilant to fake emails, calls, and websites that pretend to be official. In addition, many have urged CrowdStrike to be more keen on their quality control, to keep such incidents from happening again in the future.
CrowdStrike Owning Up To Their Actions
CrowdStrike identified the bugs and codes causing the problem and issued a fix early Friday. On Friday afternoon, CrowdStrike head George Kurtz released a statement apologizing for the outage, and that CrowdStrike is “operating normally.” The fix required computers affected by the outage to download another software update, which some were able to do automatically. Others, however, haven’t been able to load the update, which would possibly require the intervention of IT workers at some companies to reboot and tinker with all affected computers.
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