Global cyber outage grounds flights and disrupts businesses

(Reuters)

July 19 – A global tech outage was disrupting operations in multiple industries on Friday, with airlines halting flights, some broadcasters off-air and everything from banking to healthcare hit by system problems.

American Airlines (AAL.O), opens new tab, Delta Airlines (DAL.N), opens new tab, United Airlines (UAL.O), opens new tab and Allegiant Air (ALGT.O), opens new tab grounded flights citing communication problems. The order came shortly after Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab said it resolved its cloud services outage that impacted several low-cost carriers, though it was not immediately clear whether those were related.

“A third party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide, including at United. While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports,” United said in a statement. “Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations.”

Australia’s government said outages suffered by media, banks and telecoms companies there appeared to be linked to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike (CRWD.O), opens new tab.

According to an alert sent by Crowdstrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, the company’s “Falcon Sensor” software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the “Blue Screen of Death”.

The alert, which was sent at 0530 GMT on Friday, also shared a manual workaround to rectify the issue.

A Crowdstrike spokesperson did not respond to emails or calls requesting comment.