Americans are waking up this morning to discover that the whole internet isn’t working properly. It’s a crisis that has spread around the world, grounding flights, shutting down hospital procedures, and causing worldwide travel chaos, and it seems it’s all because of a single software update by cyber-security firm Crowdstrike.
According to Crowdstrike, which is usually the place big companies turn to for help during cyberattacks, an update to their software has caused Microsoft’s Windows operating system to crash, resulting in the infamous Blue Screen of Death. Given Crowdstrike works with 25,000 businesses, and how integral Windows is to the running of so many of the world’s computers, this error has had monumental consequences.
American Airlines grounded all its flights this morning (although as of 6.30 a.m. says they’re beginning to run again), alongside many other airlines around the world. KLM reported that the circumstances made “flight handling impossible.” At the time of writing, Delta’s flights were still all paused.
In Australia and Europe, where the outages have had a greater effect due to their days starting hours earlier, hospitals have reported having to cancel operations, while in the UK almost all GP practices had to stop seeing all but the most urgent patients.
Grocery stores found they couldn’t take payments, DC’s Metro stopped running, entire TV networks were unable to broadcast, and in Alaska, 911 systems broke down.
In the last few minutes, Crowdstrike has confirmed that its software appears to be the cause, after many other major firms speculated that this was the case. The company released a statement saying that the “defect” had been found, and that “a fix has been deployed.” The firm also made clear that this wasn’t a cyberattack. Here’s the statement in full:
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 organisations ensure they’re communicating with Crowdstrike representatives through official channels.
Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of Crowdstrike customers.
However, the BBC in the UK is reporting that it might not be as simple as rolling out a patch. Given the issue is causing computers to BSOD, an enormous amount of the fix could involve hands-on rebooting of machines, and Crowdstrike is very widely used. The BBC’s correspondent reported, “It…appears to be not something that can be fixed with a central command from an IT administrator in a firm’s HQ. They will need to go and reboot each and every computer affected.”
Comparisons are being drawn with 2017’s WannaCry cyberattacks in terms of the scale of the problems caused, however many places that were affected are reporting that services are resuming as the morning goes on.
This will lead to enormous questions in the coming days over how vulnerable the modern internet is to something as simple as a single software update. 2024’s internet doesn’t represent that of twenty years ago, with three companies now running almost everything: Microsoft, Amazon and Google. When something affects just one of these three, the results are international and catastrophic, as we’ve seen today.
However, at least Kotaku is still running.
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