The whole world came to a standstill, stocks crashed, air travel was paralyzed, banks stopped after an antivirus program update could get stuck with Windows operating systems. Nice people! Let's rely on self-driving cars, take out the cash, artificial intelligence will take care of everything... It's a beautiful new world!

International news agencies report that worldwide IT failure is preventing the operation of airports, airlines, railways, banks, financial services, media groups and other large systems, including disruptions at all Spanish airports, Berlin and Amsterdam airports, the largest British railway company, British Sky TV company and many companies in Australia and New Zealand. It is known that the problem is not a cyber attack, but an IT error, reports hirado.hu.

Thousands of workers were unable to log into their computers Friday morning, disrupting companies from finance to healthcare.

Australian retail companies such as Woolworths and 7-Eleven were the first to be affected by the problem. Sydney Airport said a short time later that operations were being disrupted due to a "global technical fault".

In Europe, airlines and airports also warned of disruptions

The US Federal Aviation Administration said Delta, United and American Airlines grounded flights waiting to take off. According to several comments published on social media, the malfunction was blamed on an update of the security software of the American company CrowdStrike, which caused a problem in Microsoft's Windows system, reports the Financial Times.

The company wrote only this on its social media page for its business customers:

"CrowdStrike aware of reports of Windows system crashes".

  • A technical error also occurred at Berlin's Brandenburg Airport, where the check-in of passengers is delayed.
  • According to Aena, Spain's main airport operator, they have the same problem as the Germans, they currently carry out their operations with a manual system, as they also had IT problems. This also caused delays.
  • Ryanair on Friday morning blamed a third-party IT problem for the delays, which is beyond Ryanair's control and affects all airlines operating through the network.
  • At London's Luton airport, they also ran into problems due to the IT problem, and they are currently trying to continue work with manual systems there as well. All passengers are asked to watch for schedule changes.

Microsoft is aware of the bug

The London Stock Exchange Group said it was investigating the issue of publishing news releases. The exchange's news service was unable to publish its news due to a global technical problem caused by a third party. As reported, their other systems, including the stock exchange, are operating normally.

Earlier on Friday, Microsoft said that some customers connected to its Azure cloud service in the central United States may experience problems, but that they are working to fix the problem.

They say it's not a cyber attack, but it seems to be a technical problem, and most of the services have already been restored.

But broader outages persisted, with some users unable to access various apps and services in the Microsoft 365 suite of apps and services, such as the Teams video conferencing tool, on Friday.

Microsoft said it is treating the issue with the highest priority and urgency, but systems are expected to return in stages. They added that the same Azure issue appears to be causing these errors as well.

News agencies are also involved

David Rhodes, executive chairman of Sky News, said on X that the broadcaster was unable to broadcast live on Friday morning and apologized for the disruption.

It is understood that the BBC's children's channel, CBBC, is also affected by the error, and is currently not broadcasting.

Systems are now starting to shut down in Asia

According to the latest news from Sky News, Malaysia's railway company KTMB is also struggling with ticketing and customer service issues. Also, AirAsia and VietJet Air flights are delayed at Singapore Changi Airport.

Cyber ​​security company CrowdStrike has previously criticized Microsoft for the series of attacks the company has faced recently. This year, the company launched a product designed to complement Microsoft's own Defender antivirus tool.

Source: civilek.info / hirado.hu / MTI

Photo: Gerd Altmann / Pixabay