Major Microsoft Outage Disrupts Global Services: Flights, Banks, Stock Exchanges Affected

Massive Microsoft Outage Hits Flights, Banks, Stock Exchanges, Broadcasters

A major IT outage affecting systems globally, including in India, Australia, Germany, and other countries, was reported on Friday. This massive Microsoft outage unleashed havoc on computer systems across the world, grounding flights and crippling banks, stock exchanges, payment systems, and emergency services. Approximately six hours after the outage was first reported, Microsoft tweeted that “Multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress.”

The outage is possibly due to the failure of CrowdStrike Falcon, a cybersecurity platform that provides security solutions for Microsoft Windows. The disruptions continued hours after Microsoft stated it was fixing the issue. Both Microsoft and CrowdStrike have ruled out claims of a cyber attack, stating that the outage occurred due to a “recent update received in the product.”

Impact on India

In India, the outage caused widespread disruptions in flight operations, payment systems, and trading, among other services. Flight delays were reported across airports, leading to long queues. The outage affected booking and check-in services for several airlines, including IndiGo, Akasa Airlines, and SpiceJet. The central government, taking cognizance of the cyber outage, stated that it is in discussions with Microsoft to resolve the issue. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is likely to issue an advisory on the outage.

Major Airline Disruptions

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines announced that the outage made it “impossible” to handle flights. “KLM has also been affected by the global computer outage, making it impossible to handle flights. We are working hard to resolve the problem. For now, we are forced to suspend most of the operation,” the airline said.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of Europe’s busiest hubs, was affected by the global outage. “The outage has an impact on flights flying from and to Schiphol,” a spokesperson said. Berlin Airport halted all flights due to a technical fault. The airport operator said in a post on social media that check-ins were delayed due to the error.

In the US, several major airlines, including American Airlines, Delta, and United, reportedly grounded all flights. Authorities in Spain reported a “computer incident” at all its airports, while Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions that would affect “all airlines operating across the Network.”

Flyers at Edinburgh Airport in Britain were unable to use automated boarding pass scanners, and monitors at security displayed a message saying “server offline.” Turkish Airlines was also experiencing problems with ticketing, check-in, and reservation processes due to a global technical issue in information systems.

Stock Exchanges Hit

Operations of stock exchanges in various countries were disrupted by the outage. Services at the London Stock Exchange were affected. Several brokerage firms also faced technical outages, including Nuvama, Edelweiss, and Motilal Oswal. Traders reported disruptions in their operations in India. Payment systems were impacted all over the world, including in India.

The global outage has even caused disruptions in the IT operations of the Paris Olympics 2024. Just a week before the Olympic Games begin, the Paris Olympics’ organizing committee informed about the impact of the outage. “We have activated contingency plans in order to continue operations,” the organizing committee said in a statement.

News Broadcasters Down

The outage also hit news services across the globe. Britain’s Sky News, one of the country’s major television news channels, said they were unable to broadcast. “Sky News have not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, currently telling viewers that we apologize for the interruption,” the broadcaster’s executive chairman David Rhodes said on X.

News agency Associated Press also faced service disruption in news delivery. “The Associated Press is currently experiencing an intermittent service disruption that may impact your view of available content,” an update received by India Today stated. ABC News in Australia was also unable to broadcast news following the system failure.

Australia was one of the first countries to report the outage, where it affected banks, telecoms, media outlets, and airlines. A “large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon,” Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator said. In the United States, emergency 911 services were disrupted in many parts of the United States, and non-emergency call centers were also not working due to the outage.

Health services are affected in many countries. A health booking system used by doctors in England has gone offline. Two hospitals in the northern German cities of Luebeck and Kiel have canceled elective operations scheduled for today, news agency Reuters reported.

Services Improving, Says Microsoft

CrowdStrike and Microsoft stated that they are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it. Microsoft said that multiple services are “continuing to see improvements in availability” as the company’s mitigation actions progress. “We’re investigating an issue impacting users’ ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services. We’re continuing to reroute the affected traffic to healthy infrastructure,” the company said in a series of posts on X, later indicating that they saw improvement in services.

Meanwhile, a Microsoft spokesperson said, “We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming.” “We’re aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform,” the spokesperson added. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said that the company is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.

Kurtz also pointed out that Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted by the current outage. “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers,” he posted on X.

How to Resolve the Issue?

The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) of the central government issued an advisory explaining how to resolve the issue. The issues occurred in the latest update of CrowdStrike and the changes have been reverted by the CrowdStrike team. If hosts are still crashing and unable to stay online to receive the Channel File Changes, the following steps can be used as a workaround for this issue:

Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment.
Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory.
Locate the file matching “C-00000291*.sys” and delete it.
Boot the host normally.

CERT-In has also issued an advisory on the Microsoft outage caused by the CrowdStrike update and rated its severity as “critical.”

IT Ministry in Touch with Microsoft

Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the IT ministry is in touch with Microsoft regarding the global outage and added that the NIC network is not affected. In a post on X, IT minister Vaishnaw said that the reason for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue. “MEITY is in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage… NIC network is not affected,” the minister said.