PARIS: Planes were gradually taking off again on Saturday after global airlines, banks and media were thrown into turmoil by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program.
Airports and major institutions around the world faced significant disruptions on Friday due to a global IT crash triggered by an update to a cybersecurity program, leading to widespread flight cancellations and operational chaos.
The incident began affecting systems on Thursday night, impacting Microsoft Windows users running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity software. The update caused systems to crash, resulting in what is colloquially known as the “blue screen of death” error message.
By Saturday, many affected airports and institutions reported that operations were gradually returning to normal. Airports in Germany and France, crucial hubs for international travel, were among those seeing improvements as they prepared for the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris.
In the United States, where the issue prompted a grounding of flights initially, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) later allowed airlines to resume operations, although delays and congestion persisted.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm responsible for the faulty update, issued an apology for the disruption. In a blog post on Saturday, the company acknowledged the issue stemmed from a software update released on Thursday evening. George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, personally apologized and assured the public that a fix had been deployed to mitigate the problem.
“We want to personally apologize to every organization, every group, and every person who has been impacted,” Kurtz said in an interview with CNBC.
Despite the rollout of a fix, CrowdStrike cautioned that it could take several days for operations to fully return to normal.
The White House confirmed that President Joe Biden’s team was in contact with CrowdStrike and affected parties to offer assistance as needed. The scale of the disruption prompted concerns about cybersecurity vulnerabilities and potential phishing attempts targeting those affected by the outage.
Health services in the Netherlands and Britain reportedly faced disruptions, while media outlets such as Sky News in the UK and ABC in Australia experienced difficulties in broadcasting and operations.
Experts emphasized the unprecedented scale of the outage, noting its potential long-term implications for IT infrastructure resilience and cybersecurity protocols worldwide.
“While experienced users can implement workarounds, expecting millions to do so is impractical,” remarked Oli Buckley, a professor at Loughborough University.
The incident has prompted calls for a reevaluation of reliance on critical software systems and the need for enhanced resilience against common cause failures, according to John McDermid, a professor at York University.
