A sign for Microsoft offices is seen, May 6, 2021, in New York.
Mark Lennihan / AP
Updated July 19, 2024 at 08:01 AM ET
A technological meltdown disrupted airlines, banks, hospitals and emergency services on Friday.
Thousands of Microsoft users reported being suddenly knocked offline, and the culprit appeared to be cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which had a routine software update malfunction.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” the company said in a statement.
Customers using Mac and Linux operating systems were not affected, according to CrowdStrike.
When the botched update crashed computer systems, scores of airport travelers were stranded, hospital appointments were delayed and live news broadcasts were cut short.
CrowdStrike said it was not a cyberattack, but rather a software glitch. The company said the issue has been identified and that a fix was sent to customers.
But not before Delta Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines grounded all flights.
In some states, including Alaska and Ohio, 911 phone lines were down.
Passengers wait in front of check-in counters at the capital's Berlin Brandenburg Airport, in Schönefeld, Germany, on Friday after a widespread technology outage disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world.
Christoph Soeder / AP/DPA
Non-emergency operations were canceled at hospitals in Germany, and doctors in England struggled to access basic medical records amid the software snafu.
The London Stock Exchange's news service stopped working.
In France and Australia, live television broadcasts were knocked off line.
Crashed computers displayed "it looks like Windows didn't load correctly" messages on blue screens, sometimes called the "blue screen of death," with some marooned travelers sharing videos of the blue error screens displayed on giant displays in airports.
“This is clearly a major black eye for CrowdStrike,” said WedBush analyst Dan Ives.
While server-related outages are common, the scale of the CrowdStrike disruption was astonishing to many tech observers.
“This IT outage is a stark reminder of how dependent we are on technology and many other things that happen behind the scenes that most of us are unaware of,” said Louisville-based tech executive Adam Robinson on X. “Modern society and the many comforts we enjoy is a fragile thing.”