CrowdStrike: IT outage causes misery for travellers, shoppers and healthcare workers

George Kurtz said a fix had been deployed for a bug in an update rolled out by the cybersecurity firm which affected Microsoft Windows PCs, knocking many offline around the world, causing flight and train cancellations and crippling some healthcare systems.

In an interview with NBC’s Today Show in the US, Mr Kurtz said the incident was not a cyber attack, but admitted that despite CrowdStrike identifying the bug which sparked the issue and rolling out a fix, it would still be “some time” before all systems returned to normal.

The flawed update caused major infrastructure to grind to a halt with computer systems knocked offline, and many devices were showing the so-called “blue screen of death” as they got stuck in an endless cycle of trying to reboot themselves, affecting key sectors across the country.

The outage was “causing disruption in the majority of GP practices” in England but there was no known impact on 999 or emergency services, NHS England said. The health service said patients should attend appointments unless told otherwise and should only contact their GP in urgent cases. Across England, GP surgeries reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records as their EMIS Web system went down.

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) said “services in community pharmacies, including the accessing of prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries, are disrupted today”.

In an update on its website, Microsoft suggested users of virtual machines – a PC where the computer is not in the same place as the screen – turn their devices on and off again up to 15 times to help reboot the device and fix the issue. In the UK, Sky News briefly went off air on Friday morning and Britain’s biggest train company warned passengers to expect disruption because of “widespread IT issues”, as did many major airlines and airports.

An emergency Cobra meeting was held at official level in Whitehall on Friday morning to discuss the chaos.

Around the world, banks, supermarkets and other major institutions reported computer issues disrupting services, while many businesses were unable to take digital payments or access key databases. At airports, flights were cancelled and staff forced to check in passengers manually on specific flights to help ease long queues. And one impacted airline, Ryanair, urged passengers whose flights have been cancelled to leave the airport.

The airline said in a statement: “Unfortunately, we’ve been forced to cancel a small number of flights today due to this global third-party IT outage. Affected passengers have been notified and are advised to log into their myRyanair account once systems are back online to see their options.

“A full list of cancellations is available at ryanair.com. If your flight has been cancelled, we kindly request that you leave the airport as the IT outage means we cannot currently assist passengers at the airport.”

“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused by this global third-party IT outage, and we are working hard to minimise disruption and keep passengers informed.”

Earlier in the day, Govia Thameslink Railway – parent company of Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern – warned passengers to expect delays.