Transport providers, businesses, hospitals and governments rushed to get all their systems online on Saturday after long disruptions. Widespread technical failure.
The biggest continuing effect is on air travel. Carriers canceled thousands of flights on Friday, with many planes and crew now misplaced, while airports continue to face problems with check-in and security. At around 2pm EDT on Saturday, flight tracking service FlightAware made the listing 25,000 flight delays on its website.
Both American Airlines and United Airlines said Saturday that most of their operations were restored, back up and running.
The massive disturbance is in the heart CrowdStrike is a cyber security company that provides software to many companies around the world. The company says the problem occurred when the wrong update was applied to computers running Microsoft Windows, noting that the issue behind the outage was not a security incident or cyber attack.
A CrowdStrike software update caused Microsoft to crash, causing a familiar — and terrifying — screen return for many Windows users: it’s informally known as “The Blue Screen of Death” indicating that their computer systems are down.
Microsoft said 8.5 million devices running its Windows operating system were affected by the outage, which affected consumers and businesses around the world, including airlines, banks, health care providers, telecoms, retailers and billboards in New York City’s Times Square.
A The blog post was shared on Saturday morningMicrosoft is working with CrowdStrike to develop a solution, share instructions on how to fix the problem and, among other things, have “hundreds of Microsoft engineers and experts working directly with customers to restore services.” Help affected customers.
“We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines,” said a blog post by Microsoft cybersecurity executive David Weston.
“Although the percentage is small, the broader economic and social impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by organizations that operate many critical services.”
Ping Guan / REUTERS
Here’s the latest:
A group of Austrian doctors calls for better data protection for patients
In Austria, a leading doctors’ organization exposed the vulnerability of healthcare systems that rely on digital systems as a global IT outage.
“Yesterday’s incidents underscore how important it is for hospitals to have analog backups to protect patient care,” Harald Meyer, vice president of the Austrian Doctors’ Chamber, said in a statement on the organization’s website.
The organization called on governments to impose higher standards for patient data protection and security and for healthcare providers to train staff and put systems in place to manage crises.
“Fortunately, where there were problems, these were kept small and short-lived, and many maintenance areas were not affected,” said Meyer in Austria.
Britain’s transport system is still trying to get back on track
LONDON – Britain’s travel and transport industries are struggling to get back on schedule after a global security shutdown as air travelers face cancellations and delays on the first day of summer holidays for many schoolchildren.
Gatwick Airport said the “vast majority” of scheduled flights were expected to take off. Manchester Airport said passengers were being checked manually and cancellations could be made at the last minute.
The Port of Dover said it was seeing an influx of displaced air passengers, with hours waiting to enter the port to catch ferries to France.
Meanwhile, Britain’s National Cyber Security Center warned people and businesses to be on the lookout for phishing attempts as “opportunistic malicious actors” try to take advantage of the outage.
Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber Security Center, said the worst of the crisis was over, saying, “The nature of a crisis is that it went wrong very quickly. It was detected very quickly and essentially it was extinguished.”
He told Sky News that some businesses could return to normal very quickly, but sectors such as aviation would take longer.
“If you’re on a flight, you’ve got people, planes and staff all stuck in the wrong place… So we’re looking at days. I’d be surprised if we see weeks.”
Germany Airlines expects most of its flights to operate normally
BERLIN – Lufthansa’s budget subsidiary Eurowings is expected to return to “mostly scheduled” flight operations on Saturday.
On Friday, a global IT outage forced the airline to cancel 20% of its flights, mostly on domestic routes. Passengers were asked to travel by trains instead.
“Online check-in, check-in at the airport, boarding processes, booking and rebooking flights are all possible again,” the airline said on Saturday at X. “However, a significant amount of global IT disruption may still be due to isolated disruptions to passengers,” it said.
Delta Airlines and its regional subsidiaries have canceled hundreds of flights
DALLAS — Delta Air Lines and its regional affiliates canceled more than a quarter of their schedules on the East Coast Friday afternoon, according to flight data provider Sirius.
More than 1,100 flights for Delta and its subsidiaries have been canceled. 40% of the airline’s mainline flights were delayed by Saturday afternoon, and 25% were cancelled. Georgia’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the epicenter of the disruption, with about 40% of regional flights canceled, according to FlightAware.
Half of United Airlines’ flights were delayed by Saturday afternoon, and 15% were canceled. The airport, the airline’s hub in Houston, is seeing the worst delays.
American Airlines’ network has canceled 450 flights, 7.5% of its schedule, and sees Saturday as a recovery day.
Southwest and Alaska don’t use CrowdStrike software, which has led to global internet outages and canceled fewer than half-a-dozen flights each.
How health systems cope
Health care systems hit by the outage have seen hospital closures, canceled surgeries and appointments, and restricted access to patient records.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles said “steady progress has been made” to bring its servers back online and thanked patients for being flexible during the crisis.
“Our teams will be active through the weekend as we continue to resolve remaining issues in preparation for the start of the work week,” the hospital wrote. Report.
In Austria, a leading physician organization, the outage exposed the vulnerability of relying on digital systems. Harald Mayer, vice president of the Austrian Doctors’ Chamber, said the outage showed that hospitals must have analog backups to protect patient care.
The organization called on governments to impose higher standards on patient data protection and security, and for healthcare providers to train staff and establish systems to deal with crises.
“Fortunately, where there were problems, these were kept small and short-lived, and many maintenance areas were not affected,” said Meyer in Austria.
The University Hospital of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany canceled all elective procedures on Friday, saying on Saturday that systems were gradually being restored and that elective surgery could resume on Monday.
The mayor of Portland, Oregon, declared a state of emergency due to the outage
PORTLAND, Ore. – Mayor Ted Wheeler declared a state of emergency Friday after a global Internet outage affected more than half of the city’s computer systems.
Wheeler said during a news conference that while emergency service calls are not intercepted, dispatchers must manually track 911 calls with pen and paper for hours. He said 266 of the city’s 487 computer systems were affected.
Crossing the border into the US is delayed
SAN DIEGO – People seeking to enter the U.S. from both the North and the South are finding their crossings delayed by an internet blackout.
The San Ysidro Port of Entry was blocked Friday morning, with pedestrians waiting three hours to cross. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Even cars containing low-risk U.S. customers and people approved for the Border Patrol’s “Trusted Traveler” program waited up to 90 minutes. Called Sentry, the program moves travelers quickly through customs and passport control once they make an appointment for an interview.
Meanwhile, at the US-Canada border, there were long delays at crossings at the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, Windsor police said.
Caroline Castor/AP
