Banks, airports, TV stations, hotels and many other businesses are grappling with widespread IT outages, grounded flights and widespread disruptions after bugs began appearing on Windows computers around the world.
Early Friday morning, companies in Australia that utilize Microsoft’s Windows operating system began reporting that devices were experiencing blue screens of death (BSODs). Shortly after, reports of disruptions began pouring in from around the world, including the UK, the Netherlands and the US: Sky News went down, and US airlines United, Delta and American Airlines issued “global ground stop” on all flights.
Widespread Windows crashes have been linked to a software update from cybersecurity giant Crowdstrike. The issues are not believed to be related to a malicious cyberattack. Company engineers posted on the company’s Reddit forum that they have observed “widespread reports of BSODs on Windows hosts” occurring in its software, are working on the issue and have recommended workaround for affected systems.
So far, the incident appears to be affecting only Windows devices, not other operating systems. It’s unclear how widespread the issues are or how long it will take to fix them. Microsoft and Crowdstrike did not immediately respond to WIRED’s requests for comment on the outage.
However, the incident could cost organizations that were affected and had to suspend or cease operations, says Łukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity consultant, who says the Crowdstrike update appears to be linked to the Falcon Sensor product. The Falcon system is part of Crowdstrike’s security tools and could block attacks on systemsaccording to company information.
“It reminds us of our dependence on IT and software,” Olejnik says. “When a system has multiple software systems supported by different vendors, it’s a matter of trusting them. They can be a single point of failure—like here, where multiple companies are affected.”
This is a developing story and is being updated with up-to-date information.