Global cyber outage grounds flights, hits media, financial, telecoms

KATHMANDU: Major corporate and governmental systems were forced to stop working on Friday due to communications issues. At the same time, carriers, media companies, banks, and telecom firms around the world reported system outages that disrupted their operations.

American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Air grounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft resolved a cloud services outage that impacted several low-cost carriers.

The issue caused computers to display a blue screen after being turned on. Reports indicate that this problem is more prevalent in computers running licensed Windows 10 and 11 systems.

Most corporate and enterprise customers worldwide using the CrowdStrike sensor version have experienced this issue.

In Nepal, the cyber outage has affected various embassies, including the US Embassy, British Embassy, Indian Embassy, and Australian Embassy, as well as government agencies, telelcom, banks, airlines, and the corporate sector.

It was not immediately clear whether the call to keep flights from taking off was related to the earlier Microsoft cloud outage.

In Australia, media, banks, and telecom companies suffered outages, which the government linked to an issue at global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The crowdsourced website Downdetector showed outages at several banks and telecom companies.

CrowdStrike ran a recorded phone message on Friday, stating it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to its Falcon sensor, without mentioning Australia.

The office of Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator, Michelle McGuinness, said in a post on X that there was no information to suggest the outage was a cyber security incident.

The outages had widespread effects, with Spain reporting a “computer incident” at all its airports. Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions affecting “all airlines operating across the Network,” though it did not specify the nature of the disruptions.

AWS cloud service provider said in a statement that it was “investigating reports of connectivity issues to Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS.”

It was not immediately clear whether all reported outages were linked to CrowdStrike problems or if other issues were at play. syncReuters