Airlines, TV channels, banks and businesses across the UK and the world have been hit by a large-scale IT outage.
In Britain, Sky News was knocked off air, while the UK’s biggest rail company warned passengers to expect disruption due to “widespread IT issues” — just as rush hour hit. Millions who rely on Microsoft 365 apps, like Word, Excel and Microsoft Teams, were left unable to connect because of the outage.
The cause of the global IT meltdown is believed to be an update from antivirus firm CrowdStrike, which is used by thousands of the biggest brands and enterprise companies. An error in the code caused an error message across millions of Windows 10 PCs, taking out critical systems and IT infrastructure. Some experts have suggested an unofficial fix to resolve the BSOD error in Windows 10.
At Luton airport, outages reportedly affecting low-cost carrier Wizz left hundreds of disappointed holidaymakers stuck in queues, with would-be travellers taking to social media to post footage of the chaos at the check-in desks.
Other UK airports affected by the widespread outage include London Gatwick, Edinburgh and London Stansted, which have all apologised for the disruption.
Queues piled up at Luton airport as airlines were hit by the outage
X
Queues also hit Gatwick Airport following the outage
PA
Ryanair has said its flights are being disrupted by the outage; in a statement today, the low-cost airline wrote: “We’re currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a global third party IT outage which is out of our control.
“We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least three hours before their scheduled departure time.”
National Rail said there were “widespread IT issues across the entire network” with IT teams “actively investigating to determine the root cause of the problem”.
Meanwhile, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) – which runs Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern – warned passengers to expect delays because of the issue.
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Supermarkets from Britain to Australia were hit by the cyber outage
Reuters
Sky News’ TV broadcasts have been scuppered by the IT outage
Sky News
GP surgeries and medical providers in the UK and US have also been hit – with healthcare firms reporting a “national issue” affecting clinical computer systems and warning that appointments could be cancelled or rearranged.
US carriers United, Delta and American Airlines all issued a “global ground stop” on their flights – and though planes currently in the air will press on, further flights are set to remain grounded for the foreseeable future.
Virgin Australia, which runs frequent commuter services between major cities in the country, also issued a similar “total ground stop” notice, with “no flights going in or out”.
Other airports in Japan, India, Belgium, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and more have also been affected by the outage – with authorities still unclear on just how many flights could be hit by the problems.
Ryanair has said its flights are being disrupted by the outage
PA
Outage monitoring site DownDetector listed a swathe of websites which were affected by the outage – in the UK alone, Sky, BT, Visa, Microsoft, Mastercard, Lloyds, Sainsbury’s, British Airways and Tesco were all reportedly “downed”.
And multiple high street banks have also been struck by this morning’s internet outage including Lloyds Bank, Santander and Nationwide Building Society.
Toby Murray, associate professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said it was possible a “buggy” update to one of global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike’s products may have been the cause of the global outage.
“CrowdStrike Falcon has been linked to this widespread outage,” he said, adding to reports from Australian telecoms firm Telstra that the worldwide outage was “because of a global issue affecting both Microsoft and CrowdStrike”.
In a statement released on social media, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz reassured those affected that the outage was “not a security incident or a cyberattack” and that his team was “fully mobilised” to help out customers in the wake of the blackout.
Kurtz said: “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.”