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Global Disruption Caused by Botched Cybersecurity Update
Businesses and public services worldwide experienced significant disruption following a failed update of a widely-used cybersecurity program, which subsequently impacted Microsoft Corp. systems. CrowdStrike Holdings Inc.'s CEO, George Kurtz, announced on X that the fault has been identified and rectified, emphasizing that this incident was not the result of a cyberattack. Compounding matters, Microsoft also faced an unrelated issue with its Azure cloud service.
Major Impact Across Sectors
The outage affected airlines, banks, and healthcare systems, highlighting the vulnerabilities in the modern economy and the critical role of security software. Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity professor at Surrey University, described the event as “unprecedented,” predicting substantial economic repercussions. The incident underlined the widespread use of Microsoft Windows and the extensive adoption of CrowdStrike's security software, used by many organizations globally. Windows boasts over a 70% installation rate on devices, and CrowdStrike is recognized as a leader in corporate protection software.
Widespread Organizational Disruptions
Organizations like McDonald’s Corp., United Airlines Holdings Inc., and the LSE Group reported issues ranging from impaired communications to hampered customer service. Airports from Singapore to Zurich were also affected. In New York, the subway experienced a lapse in arrival information, although services continued to operate. Bloomberg terminals remained unaffected.
Economic and Market Repercussions
Microsoft acknowledged the issue, attributing it to an update from a third-party software platform, and also dealt with a separate glitch affecting Microsoft 365 apps. The outages negatively impacted several sectors, leading to a 20% drop in CrowdStrike shares and a 2.9% decline in Microsoft shares.
Historical Context of IT Outages
Past disruptions, while significant, were less impactful compared to this incident. In 2017, Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud service errors disrupted tens of thousands of websites. In 2021, the content delivery network Fastly experienced issues that affected various media networks, and there were separate disruptions at Amazon's AWS cloud service. Australian security consultant Troy Hunt termed the current outage as potentially "the largest IT outage in history."
Initial issues surfaced in the US late on Thursday, linked to Microsoft’s Azure and 365 services. Subsequent problems with CrowdStrike emerged in Asia and cascaded through systems in Europe. Despite the extensive impact, essential services like the New York subway managed to operate, albeit without arrival information.
