Transport providers, businesses and governments were scrambling Saturday to get all their systems back online after long outages following a power outage. widespread technology outage.
The biggest ongoing impact has been on air travel. Airlines cancelled thousands of flights on Friday, and now have many of their planes and crews in the wrong places, while airports continue to face problems with check-in and security.
At the heart of the massive turmoil is Crowd Strikea cybersecurity company. Provides software to dozens of companies. Worldwide. The company says the problem occurred when it rolled out a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows, noting that the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.
Here’s the latest:
Microsoft: 8.5 million Windows devices affected
Microsoft says 8.5 million devices running its Windows operating system were affected by a faulty cybersecurity update on Friday that led to disruptions around the world.
A Microsoft blog post on Saturday was the first estimate of the scope of the disruption caused by the CrowdStrike cybersecurity company’s software update.
“We currently estimate that the CrowdStrike update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows devices,” said David Weston, Microsoft’s chief cybersecurity officer.
“Although the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by companies that operate many critical services.”
Such a major disruption is rare, but it “is indicative of the interconnected nature of our vast ecosystem,” Weston said. Windows is the dominant operating system for personal computers worldwide.
Austrian doctors’ group calls for better protection of patient data
In Austria, a leading doctors’ organisation said the global IT outage had exposed the vulnerability of digital-based health systems.
“Yesterday’s events underline how important it is for hospitals to have analog backups” to protect patient care, Harald Meyer, vice president of the Austrian Chamber of Physicians, said in a statement on the organization’s website.
The organization called on governments to impose high standards in protecting and securing patient data, and called on health service providers to train staff and put in place crisis management systems.
“Fortunately, where there were problems, these remained small and short-term and many areas of care were not affected” in Austria, Meyer said.
Germany warns of fraud after major IT outage
BERLIN – Many companies are still suffering from the consequences of a widespread technology outage, the German government’s IT security agency says.
“Many business operations and procedures have been disrupted due to computer systems downtime,” BSI said on its website.
But the agency also said on Saturday that many affected areas had returned to normal.
It warned that cybercriminals were trying to take advantage of the situation through phishing, fake websites and other scams and that “unofficial” software code was circulating.
The agency said it was not yet clear how the faulty code ended up in the CrowdStrike software update blamed for the outage.
European airports look close to normal
LONDON – Heathrow Airport, Europe’s busiest, said it was busy but operating normally on Saturday. “All systems are back up and running and passengers are continuing their journeys smoothly,” the airport said in a statement.
Some 167 flights due to depart UK airports on Friday were cancelled, while 171 flights were cancelled due to grounding.
Meanwhile, flights at Berlin airport were departing on or close to schedule, the German news agency dpa reported, citing an airport spokesman.
Nineteen flights took off in the early hours of Saturday after authorities exempted them from a usual ban on night flights.
On Friday, 150 of the airport’s 552 scheduled domestic and international flights were cancelled due to an IT outage, disrupting the plans of thousands of passengers at the start of the summer holiday season in the German capital.
German Hospital Slowly Restoring Systems After Massive Cancellations
BERLIN – The University Hospital of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany, which cancelled all elective surgeries on Friday due to a worldwide IT outage, said on Saturday it was gradually restoring its systems.
In a statement on its website, it expected operations at its Kiel and Lübeck branches to return to normal by Monday and that “elective surgery can be performed as planned and our ambulances can return to service.”
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 disruption as airline passengers face cancellations and delays on the first day of the summer holidays for many schoolchildren.
Gatwick Airport said the “majority” of scheduled flights were expected to depart. Manchester Airport said passengers were being checked in manually and there could be last-minute cancellations.
The port of Dover said it was seeing an influx of evacuating air passengers, with an hour-long wait to enter the port to catch ferries to France.
Meanwhile, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has warned people and businesses to be wary of phishing attempts as “opportunistic malicious actors” try to take advantage of the outage.
The worst of the crisis is over, said Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber Security Centre, “because the nature of the crisis is that it went wrong very quickly. It was spotted very quickly and it was basically shut down.
He told Sky News that some businesses would be able to return to normal very quickly, but for sectors such as aviation it would take longer.
“If you’re in aviation, you’re going to have people, aircraft, employees stuck in the wrong place… so we’re looking at days. I’d be surprised if we were looking at weeks.”
The German airline expects most of its flights to operate normally.
BERLIN – Eurowings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, said it expects to return to “largely scheduled” flight operations on Saturday.
A global IT outage on Friday forced the airline to cancel about 20% of its flights, mostly on domestic routes. Passengers were asked to take trains instead.
“Online check-in, airport check-in, boarding, booking and rebooking flights are all possible again,” the airline said Saturday, citing “isolated disruptions” for passengers.
Delta Air Lines and its regional subsidiaries have canceled hundreds of flights.
DALLAS — Delta Air Lines Inc. and its regional affiliates had canceled more than a quarter of their East Coast schedule by mid-afternoon Friday, aviation data firm Cirium said.
More than 1,100 flights have been canceled by Delta and its affiliates.
United and United Express have canceled more than 500 flights, or 12% of their schedule, and American Airlines has canceled 450 flights, or 7.5% of its schedule.
The Southwest and Alaska regions do not use CrowdStrike, which caused a global internet outage and canceled fewer than six flights each.
Portland, Oregon, Mayor Declares State of Emergency Due to Power Outage
PORTLAND, Ore. — Mayor Ted Wheeler declared a state of emergency Friday after more than half of the city’s computer systems were affected by a global internet outage.
While emergency calls were not interrupted, dispatchers had to manually track 911 calls with pen and paper for several hours, Wheeler said during a news conference. He added that 266 of the city’s 487 computer systems were affected.
Border crossing delays into the United States
SAN DIEGO — People trying to enter the United States from both the north and south found border crossings delayed due to internet outages.
The San Ysidro port of entry was closed Friday morning, with pedestrians waiting three hours to cross, According to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Even cars carrying people certified for the U.S. Border Protection’s “Trusted Traveler” program for low-risk passengers waited up to 90 minutes. The program, known as SENTRI, moves passengers more quickly through customs and passport control if they schedule an interview and undergo a background check to travel through customs and passport control more quickly upon arrival in the United States.
Meanwhile, on the U.S.-Canada border, Windsor police reported long delays at crossings at the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.
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