A widespread cyber disruption has caused significant disruptions to flight operations, banking services, telecommunications, and media outlets.


On Friday, computer systems worldwide were thrown into chaos by a software update, causing flight cancellations, disrupting broadcasting services, and impacting various sectors such as banking and healthcare.

An update to a product provided by the global cybersecurity company CrowdStrike seemed to be the cause, affecting users of Microsoft's Windows Operating System. Microsoft later announced that the issue had been resolved.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz announced on social media platform X that the company is actively assisting customers affected by a flaw discovered in a singular content update for Windows hosts. A resolution is currently being implemented.

"This is not a security incident or cyberattack," Kurtz said in the post.

Early on Friday,  prominent U.S. air carriers such as American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines decided to cancel flights, causing inconvenience to passengers. Meanwhile, various other airlines and airports globally experienced delays and operational issues.

Financial institutions and banking services spanning from Australia to India and Germany issued alerts to their clients regarding potential disruptions. Traders in different markets also encountered difficulties in carrying out transactions.

"We are having the mother of all global market outages," one trader said.

In the United Kingdom, doctors' booking systems were reported to be offline by several medical officials on X. Additionally, Sky News, a prominent news broadcaster in the country, issued an apology for their inability to broadcast live. Furthermore, Manchester United football club announced on X that they had to delay the release of tickets.

Microsoft's cloud division, Azure, acknowledged the problem affecting virtual machines running Windows OS and the CrowdStrike Falcon agent, which were getting stuck in a "restarting state" during a worldwide outage.

"We're aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

An advisory was sent to clients at 0530 GMT on Friday by CrowdStrike, informing them that its "Falcon Sensor" software was triggering Microsoft Windows to crash and show a blue screen, commonly referred to as the "Blue Screen of Death". Additionally, they provided a manual solution to fix the problem.

CrowdStrike, a U.S. company, stated in a promotional video earlier this year that more than half of Fortune 500 companies utilize their software.

Ciaran Martin, a Professor at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government and former head of the UK National Cyber Security Centre, expressed that this illustration highlights the vulnerability of the world's core Internet infrastructure.

The disruptions spread extensively.

Airports in Singapore, Hong Kong, and India reported that the disruptions led to manual check-ins for some airlines.

Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, a major European hub, confirmed being impacted, while Iberia airline mentioned resorting to manual operations until their electronic check-in services were back online. Although there were delays, there were no flight cancellations.

Air France-KLM also experienced operational disturbances.

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed to the Dutch press agency ANP that it had been impacted. A representative was not immediately available to provide further details.

While some companies reported gradual restoration of their services, analysts assessed the potential implications of what one expert referred to as the largest industry-wide outage on record, considering its broader economic impact.

Ajay Unni, CEO of StickmanCyber, one of the leading cybersecurity service providers in Australia, highlighted the fact that IT security tools are meticulously designed to ensure seamless business operations in the event of a data breach. Consequently, causing a global IT outage would be a disastrous outcome.