Microsoft IT outage live: Total recovery from CloudStrike failure ‘could take weeks’ amid more flight delays

IT experts warn it could take weeks for global tech infrastructure to fully recover after a botched software update brought down systems worldwide.

The massive disruption to Microsoft systems has included flight delays and cancellations, as well as impacting hospitals, banks, supermarkets and millions of businesses.

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the equivalent of the UK's GCHQ, has issued an alert about hackers sending out bogus software fixes claiming to be CrowdStrike, with mutiple other warnings that criminals are seeking to exploit the outage .

Adam Leon Smith of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, warned it could take "weeks" for all computers and systems to be fully restored. “In some cases, the fix may be applied very quickly,” he said. “But if computers have reacted in a way that means they’re getting into blue screens... that could take days and weeks.”

It comes as more than 1,500 flights were cancelled around the world on Saturday, including at least 45 to and from the UK – affecting thousands of passengers.

Key Points

• Dozens more flights cancelled as impact of Microsoft IT outage spreads into weekend

• Close to 7,000 flights cancelled globally yesterday including 207 UK departures, data shows

• National Lottery app and website goes down across UK amid global IT outage

• ‘The largest IT outage in history'

• CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz says sorry to customers

• Cyber security software linked with outage

NHS England reports systems ‘coming back online’ but ‘still running slow’

16:07 , Tara Cobham

NHS England has reported that its systems are “coming back online in most areas” but “still running slightly slower than usual” and warned of “continued disruption” to GP services into next week.

An NHS spokesperson said: “The majority of systems including the EMIS appointment and patient record system, are now coming back online in most areas, however they are still running slightly slower than usual.

“As practices recover from the loss of IT systems on Friday, there may be some continued disruption, particularly to GP services, in some areas into next week as practices work to rebook appointments.

“The advice for Monday remains that patients should attend appointments as normal unless told otherwise.

“You can contact your GP in the usual way, otherwise please use your local pharmacy, NHS 111 online or call 111 for urgent health advice as normal.

“The 999 service has remained working over this period and so people should use this as they usually would in emergency situations.”

GPs and pharmacies say global IT outage disruption to continue over weekend

16:00 , Tara Cobham

GPs and pharmacies have said that disruption from the global IT outage will continue over the weekend, amid warnings of travel delays after flight cancellations.

A flawed update rolled out by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike knocked many offline around the world on Friday, causing flight and train cancellations and crippling some healthcare systems.

A fix was deployed for a bug in the update, which affected Microsoft Windows PCs, on Friday, as CrowdStrike’s chief executive said it would take “some time” for systems to be fully restored.

Sam Hall reports:

GPs and pharmacies say global IT outage disruption to continue over weekend

Stranded airline passengers told to ‘come on down’ to Dover port amid IT outage

15:30 , Tara Cobham

Holidaymakers left stranded by cancelled flights on Friday have been encouraged to take a ferry from Dover as thousands of families start to embark on summer holidays.

Flight delays and cancellations are among the disruption expected to continue into the weekend after Friday’s global IT outage, with experts warning it could take weeks for systems to fully recover.

It comes as thousands of families start to embark on summer holidays amid the end of the academic year for many schools.

William Warnes reports:

Stranded airline passengers told to ‘come on down’ to Dover port amid IT outage

Bombay Bicycle Club reschedule festival date they missed due to global IT outage

15:00 , Tara Cobham

Indie rock band Bombay Bicycle Club have announced the rescheduled date of a music festival performance they missed due to the global IT outage.

The British group, comprised of Jack Steadman, Jamie MacColl, Suren de Saram and Ed Nash, were due to play Poolbar Festival in the Austrian town of Feldkirch on Friday but missed it due to a cancelled flight.

In a post to Instagram on Friday evening they said: “Unfortunately our flights to get to tonight’s Poolbar Festival show were cancelled because of the IT outage.

Hannah Roberts reports:

Bombay Bicycle Club reschedule festival date they missed due to global IT outage

IT systems of UK airports and train operators ‘working as normal’, says transport secretary

14:37 , Tara Cobham

Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said the IT systems of UK airports and train operators are “back up and working as normal”, but “some delays and a small number of cancelled flights” were expected.

In a post on social media, Ms Haigh wrote: “Pleased to report that UK airports and train operators have their IT systems back up and working as normal.

“We are in constant communication with industry.

“There continues to be no known safety or security issues arising from the outage.

“Some delays and a small number of cancelled flights are expected today.

“Train operators are no longer reporting cancellations and delays as a result of the IT failure.

“Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard to get systems up and running again.”

Holidaymakers warned of summer travel disruption amid fallout from IT outage

14:30 , Tara Cobham

Holidaymakers have been warned of potential travel disruption this weekend as UK transport networks continue to feel the impact of Friday’s global IT outage.

Flight delays and cancellations are among the disruption expected to continue into the weekend after the outage, with experts warning it could take weeks for systems to fully recover.

It comes as thousands of families start to embark on summer holidays amid the end of the academic year for many schools.

William Warnes reports:

Holidaymakers warned of summer travel disruption amid fallout from IT outage

Watch: People sleeping on the ground at Hawaii airports after Microsoft outage

14:00 , Mike Bedigan

British Airways traveller forced to push his way on to flight as IT outage throws Heathrow into chaos

13:49 , Rebecca Thomas

Chris Shaw, 61, who is a consultant based in London, boarded a replacement British Airways flight from Heathrow to Berlin at 8.45am on Saturday after his original afternoon flight to the German city was cancelled on Friday.

While at Heathrow Airport, he took a video of several passengers standing in a long “seek assistance queue” as the British Airways app did not allow passengers to check in, nor did the automated check-in desk.

He told the PA news agency: “The queue was so long we would have missed the flight, which was clearly overbooked.

“So I pushed in and insisted to be dealt with. The flight was absolutely full, so if I’d not pushed in, we wouldn’t have even got seats.

“We arrived at the Gate with 20 mins to spare. Security was excellent and swift, but my criticism of Heathrow was the lack of information and staff very poorly briefed.

“There was no prioritisation of urgent flight needs nor even notice boards telling passengers where to go or what to do.”

Warning over cyberattack risks after global IT outage

13:38 , Rebecca Thomas

Crowdstrike, the firm responsible for the global IT outage, has said individuals have attempted to capitalise on the incident and distribute malicious files to Latin America based customers.

A statement from the firm said following the incident on 19 July, “CrowdStrike Intelligence has since observed threat actors leveraging the event to distribute a malicious ZIP archive...Spanish filenames and instructions within the ZIP archive indicate this campaign is likely targeting Latin America-based (LATAM) CrowdStrike customers.”

Although the incident causing the outage was not the result of a cyberattack, officials have warned there could be an increased risk of malicious attacks.

On Saturday the UK National Cyber Security Centre warned affected organisations over “an increase in related phishing” as “opportunistic malicious actors seek to take advantage of the situation”.

Passenger receives handwritten boarding pass during Microsoft outage

13:30 , Tara Cobham

A flight passenger has shown off one effect of the current Microsoft computer outage.

On Friday, July 19, it was reported that cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike issued a faulty software update on Microsoft’s Windows operating system, crashing and infecting computers with the “blue screen of death” that left users unable to restart.

Because companies have computer systems run via Microsoft, this has resulted in flights being canceled, television stations being taken offline, and some banks being unable to make payments.

Brittany Miller reports:

Passenger receives handwritten boarding pass during Microsoft outage

Third of England’s pharmacy drug supplies hit by global IT outage, officials say

13:14 , Tara Cobham

A global IT outage hit one-third of drug deliveries to pharmacies in England as chaos impacted thousands of GP practices and hospitals across the country declared critical incidents.

GPs, pharmacies and NHS 111 services across the country suffered major disruption on Friday after an update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company crashed Microsoft Windows systems.

The IT bug hit EMIS which is used by around 60 per cent of GP practices - 3,700- to access patient records, book appointments and issue prescriptions.

Health correspondent Rebecca Thomas reports:

Third of England’s pharmacy drug supplies hit by global IT outage, officials say

Huge queues as global IT outage causes chaos at Heathrow Airport

13:04 , Tara Cobham

Huge queues as global IT outage causes chaos at Heathrow Airport

In pictures: Eerie scenes in New York as Times Square screens go dark

13:00 , Mike Bedigan

What happened and when will the global IT outage be fixed?

12:30 , Tara Cobham

Experts have warned it could take weeks for systems to fully recover from a global outage which has seen disruption including flight delays and cancellations.

A flawed update rolled out by CrowdStrike, one of the world’s largest cybersecurity providers, knocked many offline around the world on Friday, causing flight and train cancellations and crippling some healthcare systems.

Here is a closer look at what we know about the incident:

Global IT outage: What happened and when will it be fixed?

Watch: Simon Calder explains your rights if flight is cancelled by global IT outage

12:04 , Tara Cobham

Growing warnings over criminals exploiting mass IT outage

12:03 , Tara Cobham

Warnings that criminals could exploit the global IT outage are growing amid fears it could cause a second wave of disruption.

Australia's cyber intelligence agency said on Saturday that "malicious websites and unofficial code" were being released online claiming to aid recovery from Friday's global digital outage.

On Saturday, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) - the country's cyber intelligence agency - said "a number of malicious websites and unofficial code are being released claiming to help entities recover from the widespread outages caused by the CrowdStrike technical incident".

On its website, the agency said its cyber security centre "strongly encourages all consumers to source their technical information and updates from official CrowdStrike sources only".

Cyber Security Minister Clare O'Neil said on social media platform X on Saturday that Australians should "be on the lookout for possible scams and phishing attempts".

What caused the Microsoft IT outage that broke flights, banks and trains across the world?

12:00 , Tara Cobham

A widespread computer outage left flights grounded, TV stations offline and much of the world’s infrastructure not working on Friday.

Cyber security experts said the outage was “unprecedented” in its reach, affecting many of the world’s biggest companies.

The cause of the problems was initially mysterious: Windows computers showed a blue screen of death, or BSOD, as if they had just spontaneously stopped working.

Andrew Griffin reports:

What caused the IT outage that broke flights, banks and trains across the world

Passengersays his mother made him arrive four hours before flight at Gatwick

11:55 , Tara Cobham

A passenger has said his mother made him arrive four hours before their flight at Gatwick Airport.

Asked if he had given himself lots of time to make his flight, Renato Martinez, 18, from London, said: “My mum has. My mum has given us lots of time. Every time, she loves coming early.”

He said he was flying to Ecuador to visit his family there.

And the teenager added he expected the check-in queue to take about 45 minutes in total.

“It’s going quicker than I expected,” he said.

Pictured: Hundreds queues at Gatwick as at least 48 more UK flights cancelled on Saturday

11:44 , Tara Cobham

Hundreds join long queues at Gatwick Airport as airlines deal with global IT outage fallout

11:39 , Tara Cobham

Hundreds of people have joined long check-in queues at Gatwick Airport as airlines continue to deal with the fallout from the global IT outage.

Charles, 50, from the Midlands, said he was glad he was in a queue to leave the country rather than arriving to the UK.

“I’m glad it’s because we’re going out,” he said.

“It’d be different if we were going back.”

He said his British Airways flight to Jamaica was in three hours, but he arrived early to get through the queues.

“Because of the situation yesterday on the news we just took a bit more time just to get here. I’m glad we did, to be honest with you.”

He said he believed the long queues on Saturday morning had been caused by everyone on long haul flights arriving at the airport early. And he added: “So they’ve all just given themselves an extra hour or two.”

Biden in contact with Crowdstrike over ongoing outage situation

11:30 , Tara Cobham

President Joe Biden is receiving regular updates on the global outages, according to a senior Administration official.

“President Biden will continue to receive updates on the CrowdStrike global tech outage that disrupted operations across multiple industries on Friday,” per the official.

“The White House is in regular contact with CrowdStrike’s executive leadership and tracking progress on remediating affected systems. We have offered US government support.

“Our understanding is that this is not a cyber attack, but rather a faulty technical update.The White House has been convening agencies to assess impacts to the US government’s operations and entities around the country.

“At this time, our understanding is that flight operations have resumed across the country, although some congestion remains, and 911 centers are able to receive and process calls.

“We are assessing impact to local hospitals, surface transportation systems, and law enforcement closely and will provide further updates as we learn more. We stand ready to provide assistance as needed.”

Close to 7,000 flights cancelled globally yesterday including 207 UK departures, data shows

11:22 , Global Travel Editor Annabel Grossman

Close to 7,000 flights were cancelled globally yesterday – equating to 6.2 per cent of all scheduled flights.

Aviation analytics firm Cirium reported that 6,855 flights were cancelled on Friday amid the global IT outage.

Of those, 207 were UK departures, which was 6.7 per cent of all scheduled flights, while 201 were UK arrivals.

As of 10am today, 1,639 flights have been cancelled globally – equating to 1.58 per cent of all scheduled flights.

The flight data shows that 23 UK departures have been cancelled so far today, which is 0.9 per cent of all scheduled flights, with a further 25 inbound flights cancelled.

What is Crowdstrike? The $80bn company linked to largest IT outage in history

11:00 , Shweta Sharma

Before this week, CrowdStrike was known for finding the cause of problems, rather than causing them. The company – headquartered in Austin, Texas, but with a reach across the world – was most famous for having investigated large-scale hacks, such as those on Sony Pictures and breaches at the Democratic National Committee that it blamed on Russian spies.

It has built a huge business out of that and other work. It was worth $80bn (£62bn) when trading on the Nasdaq closed on Thursday – though its share price has since fallen by 20 per cent. It reported revenues of $3bn in the last year.

CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 – by a team that included George Kurtz, the CEO who has been representing the company as it recovers from the problems – and immediately caught the interest of investors. The year after, it launched with a $26m investment round, and it has gathered more investment since.

Read our detailed report.

What is Crowdstrike? The $80bn company linked to ‘largest IT outage in history’

IT outage is a ‘wake up call’ and 'should never have been allowed to happen’

10:55 , Tara Cobham

A technology researcher said the global IT outage was a “wake up call” and “should never have been allowed to happen”.

Dr Stephanie Hare told BBC Breakfast: “I think it’s a process error.

“This should never have been allowed to happen because you should be testing your software updates and making sure that everything is fine before you roll them out – particularly rolling them out worldwide.

“So I think what we’ve all had here is a really big wake up call about how lacking in resilience our IT systems are.”

Dr Hare added: “Anyone who has been working in IT, and particularly in cybersecurity, has known this for years.

“We underinvest, and hopefully this is going to make people maybe stop talking about generative AI so much and actually start working on cybersecurity again.”

National Lottery app and website goes down across UK amid global IT outage

10:45 , Tara Cobham

The National Lottery app and website has gone down across the UK amid a global IT outage.

Thousands of users are currently unable to access results or buy tickets ahead of Saturday night’s draw.

Customers have been reporting issues accessing the National Lottery app as well as the website since around 8pm on Friday, according to outage website Downdetector, with complaints peaking at more than 2,800 on Saturday morning.

Read the full report here:

National Lottery app and website goes down across UK amid global IT outage

People should draw similar lessons from IT outage as from pandemic, says academic

10:37 , Tara Cobham

People should draw similar lessons from the global IT outage as they did from the pandemic, an academic has said.

Computer scientists Sir Nigel Shadbolt told the BBC’s Today programme: “Often these issues are left (to) technological elites.

“This impacts everyone and we need to understand how those effects ripple through society and think about how we all make ourselves more resilient.”

He added: “The resilience in general of these systems is something very special. We depend on these systems and by and large they are working to very high levels of quality.

“But when they do go wrong, and it’s like a pandemic, literally we should draw similar lessons, what lessons do we draw?

“As individuals, what should we be thinking? We should be thinking about a degree of resilience in our own lives. We should think about having perhaps multiple systems, not depending just on one.”

Pharmacist warns pharmacy backlogs will continue

10:36 , Tara Cobham

Thora, a pharmacist in Manchester, told the BBC’s Today programme that pharmacy backlogs would continue after Friday’s IT outage.

She said: “What we know at the moment is obviously we have been experiencing some heightened tensions in some pharmacies by patients but also people have been really understanding and have been really patient with us

“This backlog will continue because obviously there will have been patients who have been unable to access their prescription because it will be hand-written at the surgery, and we’ll get a bit of a backlog, or they will eventually come through to us.

“But it’s a bit of a concern.”

Chartered security professional warns of ‘lingering effects’ from IT outage

10:35 , Tara Cobham

A chartered security professional said there would be “lingering effects” from the IT outage that has caused disruption around the world.

James Bore told Sky News: “There are definitely going to be lingering effects.

“The largest companies and the ones with most critical services, they are going to have thrown everything they can at fixing it.

“But for other companies where they don’t have as many people to put hands on keyboard – because that’s the key thing – each fix requires a manual intervention with the computer, and we’re talking millions of computers.

“If you’ve only got one IT person in the company and 2000 employees – it’s not going to be fixed overnight.

“That’s going to be weeks of work for that person just travelling around or getting everyone to come in and sort out their laptops.”

Global IT outage causes pharmacies ‘continuous problems'

10:34 , Tara Cobham

The vice chairman of the National Pharmacy Association said the global IT outage had caused pharmacies “continuous problems”.

Olivier Picard told BBC Breakfast: “I was in a pharmacy yesterday. In fact, I’m in a pharmacy this morning and we’ve had continuous problems.”

Mr Picard added: “What we couldn’t do was download new prescriptions on July 19, but anything prior to that, that was downloaded on our computers, we were able to dispense.

“Most pharmacies will have an office based or computer-based system rather than online.

“That’s not all, but that’s the majority of pharmacies, so we were able to continue working with what we already had.

“What we couldn’t do is receive new prescriptions issued after the outage.”

GP says outage meant ‘everything went down’ in her surgery

10:33 , Tara Cobham

A GP said the global IT outage meant “everything went down” in her surgery and warned the disruption would cause “a lot more issues later on in the week”.

Asked about Friday’s outage, Dr Fari Ahmad told BBC Breakfast: “Everything went down. There are supposed to be some business continuity things that are supposed to help, but we couldn’t access some of them. I know some places lost all their phone lines as well.

“People were struggling to get in. We were struggling to tell people what was going on. And if people did turn up, you had to see them without accessing their medical records. The doctors and the surgery went down to pen and paper.”

Dr Ahmad added: “We had people who were supposed to come in for results, and we couldn’t see them. We said: ‘Sorry, we can’t help you.’ We were just trying to deal with the emergencies on the day that really couldn’t wait.

“We couldn’t do our routine stuff, so the implications for us is a lot of that’s been bumped up.

“It’s all going to build up, so there’s going to be a lot more issues later on in the week.”

Flight delays across the weekend

10:30 , Tara Cobham

Airports across the UK - including London Gatwick, Heathrow Airport, Manchester Airport and Belfast International Airport - are now stressing that passengers should check with airlines for any delays or cancellations before travelling over the weekend.

"Some delays and cancellations will continue over the weekend," said a spokesperson for London Gatwick. "We strongly advise passengers to check with their airline for the latest updates."

Patients collecting prescriptions could still face disruption this weekend

10:08 , Tara Cobham

The National Pharmacy Association has warned that patients collecting prescriptions could still face disruption this weekend following the global IT outage.

Nick Kaye, chairman of the National Pharmacy Association, which represents independent community pharmacies in the UK, said: “Systems are by and large back online and medicine deliveries have resumed in many community pharmacies today after the global IT outage.

“However, yesterday’s outage will have caused backlogs and we expect services to continue to be disrupted this weekend as pharmacies recover.

“We urge people to be patient when visiting their local pharmacy and some may be still prioritising those patients with emergency prescriptions from their GP surgery.”

Ex-National Cyber Security Centre chief says worst of IT outage is over but warns over future flaws

10:07 , Tara Cobham

The former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre said “the worst” of the global IT outage is over but warned that countries would “have to learn to cope” with future flaws.

Professor Ciaran Martin told Sky News: “The worst of this is over because the nature of the crisis was such that it went very badly wrong, very quickly. It was spotted quite quickly, and essentially, it was turned off.”

Prof Martin added: “Until governments and the industry get together and work out how to design out some of these flaws, I’m afraid we are likely to see more of these again.

“Within countries like the UK and elsewhere in Europe, you can try and build up that national resilience to cope with this. But ultimately, a lot of this is going to be determined in the US.

“If there’s going to be regulation to try and iron out these flaws, it’ll probably have to come from the US and there’s not a great deal that we can do about that.

“So unless and until the structure of the way we do tech changes, we’re going to have to learn to cope with these things, rather than eliminate them.”

Millions could face delay in getting paid as global IT outage hits payroll software

10:03 , Tara Cobham

Workers globally may not be paid on time due to a major IT outage causing chaos around the world, payroll businesses have warned.

The IT outage has resulted in queues and delays at airports, disruption to GP services and payment failures in some shops.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is “actively working” to fix a “defect” in an update for Microsoft Windows users which sparked the outage.

Rebecca Thomas reports:

Millions could face delay in getting paid as global IT outage hits payroll software

Elon Musk appears to mock CrowdStrike outage

10:00 , Mike Bedigan

Dozens more flights cancelled as impact of Microsoft IT outage spreads into weekend

09:32 , Tara Cobham

An estimated 50,000 British travellers have woken up where they did not intend to be this morning after 350 flights to, from and within the UK were cancelled on Friday.

At least 45 more flights to, from and within the UK have been cancelled on Saturday as airlines struggle to recover operations – affecting upwards of 7,000 passengers.

So what are their options for getting where they need to be?

Our Travel Correspondent Simon Calder reports:

Dozens more flights cancelled as impact of IT outage spreads into weekend

When the global IT outage issue will be fixed?

09:15 , Shweta Sharma

Experts have warned it could take weeks for systems to fully recover from a global outage which has seen disruption including flight delays and cancellations.

A problematic update released by CrowdStrike, a leading global cybersecurity company, disrupted internet services worldwide on Friday. This caused flight and train cancellations and severely impacted some healthcare systems.

What exactly happened?

CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz confirmed the issue was caused by a “defect in a single content update for Windows hosts” - in short, a flaw in a software “sensor configuration” update pushed out to customers.

He said a fix had been deployed for a bug in an update which affected Microsoft Windows PCs, causing many to crash, some displaying the so-called “blue screen of death”, and becoming unusable.

CrowdStrike confirmed Apple Mac and Linux users were unaffected.

What is the scale of the impact?

Around the world, banks, supermarkets and other major institutions saw services disrupted, while many businesses were unable to take digital payments or access key databases.

NHS England said “the majority of GP practices” had experienced disruption and ambulance services reported increases in 999 and NHS 111 calls from patients who were unable to contact other NHS providers.

The National Pharmacy Association said pharmacies had seen issues “including the accessing of prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries”.

Airlines reported being unable to process passengers and resorted to manually checking in customers at airports around the world with 167 flights departing from the UK and 171 incoming cancelled on Friday. Aviation analytics company Cirium said 5,078 flights - or 4.6 per cent of those scheduled - were cancelled globally.

How long will the issue take to be rectified?

Industry expert Adam Leon Smith of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, warned it could take “weeks” for all computers and systems to be fully restored, while Mr Kurtz said it would take “some time”.

He told NBC: “Some of the systems that aren’t recovering, we’re working with them, so it could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover.”

Microsoft deputy chief information security officer Ann Johnson said they could not predict how long it would take to get all customers back online.

Signs of disruption are likely to remain into the weekend with the National Pharmacy Association warning pharmacy services are likely to see delays as outlets deal with a backlog of medicine deliveries while airports across the UK stressed that passengers should check with airlines for any delays or cancellations before travelling over the weekend.

Recovery of IT systems could take weeks

09:00 , Chris Stevenson

Depending on the number of PCs and in how many different locations they are located, companies could face weeks of disruption, according to IT experts.“In some cases, the fix may be applied very quickly,” said Adam Leon Smith, from the BCS, chartered institute for IT. “But if computers have reacted in a way that means they’re getting into blue screens and endless loops it may be difficult to restore and that could take days and weeks.”

CrowdStrike CEO ‘deeply sorry’ for issues caused by outages

08:30 , Mike Bedigan

Major tech outages in recent years

07:46 , Shweta Sharma

A global tech outage disrupted operations across multiple industries, with many companies expected to grapple with the disruption in services in the coming days.

Here are some of the biggest tech outages in recent years, in chronological order:

British Airways

IAG-owned British Airways was hit by a major computer system failure in May 2017 that stranded 75,000 passengers over a holiday weekend, sparking a public relations disaster and pledges from the carrier that it would do better in future. According to media reports, the blackout was caused by a maintenance contractor who accidentally switched off power.

Alphabet

Some of Google’s most popular services including YouTube, Gmail and Google Drive were down for an hour during an outage on 14 December 2020. According to outage monitoring website DownDetector, more than 12,000 YouTube users were affected in various parts of the world, including the United States, Britain and India.

Fastly

In June 2021, thousands of government, news and social media websites across the globe were hit by a widespread hour-long outage linked to US-based cloud company Fastly. The issue affected several high traffic sites including Reddit, Amazon, CNN, PayPal, Spotify, Al Jazeera Media Network and the New York Times with outages ranging from a few minutes to around an hour.

Akamai

Websites of dozens of financial institutions and airlines in Australia and the United States were briefly down on 17 June 2021, due to server-related glitches at content delivery network provider Akamai. According to the firm, the problem was caused by a bug in its software.

Meta

Meta-owned social media platforms Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram went dark for six hours on 4 October 2021, with 10.6 million users reporting problems worldwide. The company said the outage was caused by a faulty configuration change.

X Corp

Social media platform Twitter suffered a major outage on 28 December 2022, leaving tens of thousands of users globally unable to access the popular social media platform or use its key features for several hours before services appeared to come back online. Downdetector tracked more than 10,000 affected users from the United States, about 2,500 from Japan and about 2,500 from the UK at the peak of the disruption.

Timelapse: How global Microsoft IT outage grounded flights across US

07:00 , Mike Bedigan

Microsoft outage impacting people across world - in photos

06:15 , Shweta Sharma

A botched security update wreaked havoc on global industries, leading to large-scale IT outages on computer systems.

Air passengers worldwide faced delays, flight cancellations and headaches checking in at airports as the screens went blank.

Banks and financial services companies warned customers of disruptions and traders across markets spoke of problems executing transactions. Insurers could face a raft of business interruption claims.

CrowdStrike CEO says ‘fix has been deployed'

05:30 , Mike Bedigan

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has said that the IT issue causing a global outage has been identified and that a fix has been deployed.

A statement from Kurtz put out on Friday afternoon confirmed that the outage was not a “security incident or cyber attack.”

“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 statement read.

“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.”

5,000 flights cancelled across world following outages, Cirium says

04:29 , Shweta Sharma

Air travel may prove to be the worst hit sector in the Microsoft outage, as carriers saw lengthy delays and cancellations with passengers waiting at airports for hours.

Out of more than 110,000 scheduled commercial flights on Friday, 5,000 were cancelled globally with more expected, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Delta Air Lines was one of the hardest hit, with 20 per cent of its flights cancelled, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. The US carrier said it expected additional delays and cancellations potentially through the weekend.

Airports from Los Angeles to Singapore, Amsterdam and Berlin said airlines were checking in passengers with handwritten boarding passes, causing delays.

In the UK, around 167 flights scheduled to depart airports were axed, with others delayed. Around 171 flights due to land in the UK were cancelled, following the technical glitch.

A spokesperson for Manchester Airport said: “Check-in and boarding for the affected airlines are being carried out manually and are taking longer than normal resulting in some long queues at check-in.“Some flights may be impacted by delays and schedules have been affected by issues caused by the effects of the global IT outage at airports all over the world. This means some flights could be cancelled by airlines at short notice

Watch: CrowdStrike CEO breaks silence after global outage

04:00 , Mike Bedigan

CrowdStrike CEO warns of potential scams as systems recover

03:58 , Shweta Sharma

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz urged people to remain “remain vigilant” against potential scams as systems recover.

In a letter to customers and partners, Kurtz said: “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this.

“I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives.”

McAfee, a security software company, said opportunistic scammers are capitalising amid the chaotic situation.

“McAfee has already seen scams, where fraudsters are exploiting the current vulnerabilities to deceive consumers,” the website said in an article.

“These scams range from phishing attacks related to flight rescheduling, to cybercrooks posing as banks to steal login information, and even retailers requesting alternate payment methods.”

More distruptions expected over weekend

03:53 , Shweta Sharma

More disruptions such as flight delays and cancellations are expected to continue during the weekend after a global IT outage.

Experts have warned it could take weeks for systems to fully recover after a flawed update rolled out by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike knocked many offline around the world on Friday.

Industry expert Adam Leon Smith of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, warned that it could even take “weeks” for all computers and systems to be fully restored.

“The fix will have to be applied to many computers around the world. So if computers are getting blue screens and endless loops, it could be more difficult and take days and weeks,” he said.

Experts warned users to “remain vigilant” against potential scams as systems recover.

In a letter to customers and partners, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said: “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this.

“I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives.”

Watch: People sleeping on the ground at Hawaii airports after Microsoft outage

03:20 , Mike Bedigan

CrowdStrike called other security firms and Government to help solve outage

02:20 , Mike Bedigan

A group of private sector and government agencies were called together by CrowdStrike to find a solution to the global tech outage, according to the former head of the computer security company McAfee.

Former McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt told CNN said the call was set up by the company and the various organizations worked overnight to determine if there was a potential threat. The call reportedly included the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other private and government organizations.

“This particular release was faulty as admitted by George Kurtz, the CEO, and we then had to replace it,” DeWalt told CNN. “But at that point, the damage had been done, and we now had to move into manual mode.”

He added that some of the companies “spent the entire night deploying thousands of people by hand reloading operating systems, starting servers back up again.”

What is CrowdStrike

01:20 , Mike Bedigan

According to its website, CrowdStrike is a global cybersecurity leader, and “has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk — endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data.”

Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and advanced AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection and remediation, elite threat hunting and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities.

The Falcon platform delivers “rapid and scalable deployment, superior protection and performance, reduced complexity and immediate time-to-value.”

Class action lawsuits expected following the global outages

Saturday 20 July 2024 00:20 , Mike Bedigan

Class action lawsuits could follow swiftly from the global power outages following billions worth of estimated lost profits, loss of date and economic opportunities, a legal expert has said.

Digital privacy and business law attorney Adam Grant, shareholder at the Los Angeles-based law firm Grant Shenon, said that legal liability, if any, would come down to the actual reason for the crash.

“Software updates are very common. They frequently cause issues. It is not below the standard of care for an update to impact other systems. However, this has been described as the largest computer crash in history,” Grant said, in a statement shared with The Independent.

“I expect there will be great focus on the quality control steps taken to minimize any impact before sending out the update. The claims would likely be based on negligence arising out of what the software company should have known regarding the update.

“I do expect class actions will be filed within a short period of time primarily based on such a theory. The damages will be in the billions and include lost profits, loss of data and loss economic opportunities and reputation repair.”

Outage chaos hits Starbucks mobile ordering

Friday 19 July 2024 23:50 , Mike Bedigan

The Starbucks mobile app, normally a smooth system for customers to pick up grab-and-go coffee orders, has also been thrown into chaos by the global outages.

“Starbucks is among those companies experiencing impacts due to a widespread third-party systems outage, resulting in a temporary outage of our mobile order ahead and pay features,” Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson said in a statement emailed to NBC News.

“We continue to welcome and serve customers in the vast majority of our stores and drive-thrus and are doing everything we can to bring all systems online as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

Tech outage halts surgeries, medical treatments across the US

Friday 19 July 2024 23:25 , Mike Bedigan

Alison Baulos says her 73-year-old father was about to head to a Kentucky hospital for open-heart surgery when it was abruptly canceled early Friday morning.

His was one of the many operations and medical treatments halted across the country because of a global technology outage.

Read the full story here:

Long queues for Ryanair at Stansted

Friday 19 July 2024 23:00 , Mike Bedigan

Here at Stansted Airport there are large crowds in the departures hall, far greater than we’d expect even for such a busy travel day. The vast majority appear to be at Ryanair where there are long queues for check-in, snaking right through the airport. Ryanair has been reporting problems with online check-in and asking passengers to check-in at the airport if needed, suggesting that they arrive at Stansted three hours before their flight. Security lines are long but moving efficiently; time through security is under 30 mins

Crowdstrike ‘understands gravity’ of situation

Friday 19 July 2024 21:45 , Mike Bedigan

In a statement issued on Friday morning Crowdstrike apoligized to all those affected by the outage, saying it understood “the gravity of the situation”.

“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on,” the statement read.

“We assure our customers that CrowdStrike is operating normally and this issue does not affect our Falcon platform systems. If your systems are operating normally, there is no impact to their protection if the Falcon Sensor is installed.”

Friday 19 July 2024 21:20 , Mike Bedigan

Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of internet performance monitoring company Catchpoint CEO, said that the global outage on Friday was a “stark reminder” of the potential infallibilty of the modern digital age.

“The scale of today's global IT outage is unparalleled in recent history,” Daoudi said, in a statement shared with The Independent.

“It serves as a stark reminder that our entire world is powered by digital experiences and that the internet is neither magically infallible nor inherently resilient. This is a reminder you need to manage and control change: Don't blindly update software or change configuration.

“At any moment, even the smallest oversight or piece of unpreparedness can bring systems—and consequently businesses—down.”

Daoudi continued: “Preparation and visibility are key, not just to prevent such outages but to mitigate the vast financial risks they pose.

“The fallout from today’s event will likely be measured not just in the disruption of services but in exponential financial losses worldwide, potentially amounting to millions or even billions in lost revenue.

“It highlights a critical vulnerability: our increasing dependency on digital infrastructure can translate into staggering costs when that infrastructure fails. Kudos to all the IT professionals and teams are working tirelessly to resolve this issue and restore services.”

Judicial system operations affected in California

Friday 19 July 2024 21:00 , Mike Bedigan

Court and jail operations were affected by the global outage in the state of California.

Los Angeles County Superior Court exprienced “significant system-wide connectivity issues” wile further south in San Diego County inmate bookings were limited.

“The Court is experiencing significant system-wide connectivity issues that are impacting the Court’s ability to conduct business,” the Los Angeles Superior Court said in an email, adding hearings with parties expecting to appear remotely will be rescheduled.

In San Diego, jail bookings were limited for a few hours while department officials employed back up systems.

“We were able to resolve the challenges relatively quickly, thanks to our exceptional team of professionals in our Sheriff’s Data Services and Detentions Processing Divisions,” the San Diego County Sheriff said, per CNN.

“These men and women worked closely with our Sheriff’s Communications Center, as well as our patrol and detentions deputies, to ensure essential services were not interrupted.”

Elsewhere in California, “all 911, public safety communications and critical infrastructure is functioning as expected,” the state Office of Emergency Services said in a social media post.

“At this time, there are no reports of impacts to life-safety public services in California,” the governor’s office said.

In pictures: Chaos at North American airports

Friday 19 July 2024 20:40 , Mike Bedigan

Watch: CrowdStrike CEO breaks silence after global outage

Friday 19 July 2024 20:20 , Mike Bedigan

US west coast affected by outage

Friday 19 July 2024 20:00 , Mike Bedigan

The effects of the outage have been felt across the US with hospitals and transport links felt on the east coast, and a state of emergency declared in the west coast state of Oregon.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler issued an emergency declaration Friday morning for the city due to the ongoing IT outage, according to a news release.

“The issue is causing computer outages and affecting multiple systems globally, impacting City servers in the City Data Centers as well as employee computers, with impacts to VPN connection and Single Sign On (SSO) to cloud services,” according to a release put out by the mayor’s office.

“City services that rely on Microsoft Operating Systems using Crowdstrike Endpoint Protection, including certain essential City service providers, are impacted by the problem including emergency communications.”

NY Governor says impact of outage is ‘unprecedented situation'

Friday 19 July 2024 19:40 , Mike Bedigan

Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, has described the impacts of the global IT outage on transportation links and health care facilities as an “unprecedented situation.”

“Our top priority is emergency services. We are working with localities to ensure that 911 systems are operational,” Hochul said in a statement.

“This has a widespread impact on hospital systems as well,” she said, adding that “most have backup systems” which are “not technology-based” but rather manned by people.

There is no indication of a cybersecurity threat or risk to personal sensitive information, Hochul said on Friday.

The 911 system is reportedly still working in all 62 NY state counties.

Safety advocacy group warns of dangers of commercial grade software in critical systems

Friday 19 July 2024 19:20 , Mike Bedigan

Following the outage, Dan O’Dowd, secure software expert and founder of safety advocacy group The Dawn Project, warned of the dangers of deploying commercial grade software in safety critical systems.

“The immense body of software developed using Silicon Valley’s ‘move fast and break things’ culture means that the software our lives depend on is riddled with defects and vulnerabilities. Defects in this software can result in a mass failure event even more serious than the one we have seen today,” he said in a statement shared with The Independent.

“We have seen that our healthcare, communications, transportation, water treatment plants, and power grids are all reliant on connected systems built on defective software that can cause the world to grind to halt from a single defect.

“We must convince the CEOs and Boards of Directors of the companies that build the systems our lives depend on to rewrite their software so that it never fails and can’t be hacked. The clock is ticking down to a Cyber Armageddon.

“Secure and reliable software exists - it is already deployed in military applications and on commercial airliners. These companies will not take cybersecurity seriously until the public demands it. And we must demand it now, before a major disaster strikes.”

Krispy Kreme offers free donuts to those affected by outage

Friday 19 July 2024 19:00 , Mike Bedigan

Donut brand Krispy Kreme offered free donuts to all those affected by the power outage, joking that a “Sweet-ware Update” was available.

“Does technology have you down today?” the company wrote on Instagram.

“Our windows are working great and so is our Hot Light! Come on in and help yourself to a FREE Original Glazed® Doughnut from 5-7pm to add some sweetness to this sour day.”

Transport systems in North America briefly affected by outage

Friday 19 July 2024 18:20 , Mike Bedigan

Some Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) customer information systems went offline briefly Friday morning due to the global outage.

“Train and bus service is unaffected,” the MTA said in a post. “Please listen for announcements in your station, on your train, or on your bus.”

The MTA is North America’s largest transportation network, according to its website, and serves a population of 15.3m people.

One in 25 flights cancelled globally

Friday 19 July 2024 18:15 , Mike Bedigan

One in 25 flights globally has been cancelled today, according to the aviation analysts at Cirium.

As of 5pm BST, 4,295 flights had been grounded: 3.9 per cent of all planned flights worldwide.

That figure looks certain to increase significantly, especially as the usual Friday afternoon and evening peak in the US approaches.

Almost 300 flights to and from UK airports have so far been cancelled, corresponding to 4.6 per cent of all scheduled UK departures). The total number at 5pm UK was 285 flights grounded.

The Independent estimates that as many as 50,000 passengers who were planning to fly to or from the UK on Friday will wake up on Saturday where they did not intend to be.

Microsoft CEO issues statement on outage

Friday 19 July 2024 18:00 , Mike Bedigan

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has released a company statement about the outage.

“CrowdStrike released an update that began impacting IT systems globally,” the statement rad.

“We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.”

More than 2,000 flights in US canceled. 30,000 plus delayed globally

Friday 19 July 2024 17:40 , Mike Bedigan

The number of flights canceled, into or outside the US has surpassed 2,000, according to Flightware.

The number of US delays was around 6,000 as of 12.30pm ET.

Delta has canceled at least 640 flights, and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport currently has the most cancellations in the US with 226.

Flightware said that over 30,000 flights had been delayed globally, and the total cancellations numbered around 4,000.

Boston hospital cancels Friday appointments

Friday 19 July 2024 17:30 , Mike Bedigan

US hospitals also affected by outage

Friday 19 July 2024 17:15 , Mike Bedigan

Hospitals on the US east coast have also been affected by the global outage.

Staffers in New York and Boston hospitals were unable to access some medical records or were having trouble figuring out where to send critically ill patients after several operating rooms were forced to shut down.

“Every day, we have a plan that’s mapped out really carefully so that we can plan our resources,” one employee of an affected New York City hospital system told NBC. “That’s all blown up.”

“The whole hospital is down,” an employee at Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston told the outlet. “They asked patients to stay home today until further notice, and we can’t access virtual visits either.”

Microsoft 365 back online

Friday 19 July 2024 16:40 , Andrew Griffin

In a separate but unfortunately timed problem, Microsoft 365 reported early this morning that there was a problem accessing its apps and services. It says that issue has now been fixed and that is believes all apps and services have been recovered.

PR professional criticises CrowdStrike statement

Friday 19 July 2024 16:22 , Andrew Griffin

Among other things, the CrowdStrike chief executive’s first statement didn’t include an apology. That has led to a range of frustrated reactions from people affected by today’s chaos.

Here’s a long thread from Lulu Cheng Meservey, who previous headed PR at Activision, looking at exactly why the statement didn’t work.