A widespread technology outage caused chaos on Friday as flights were grounded, banks went offline, and media outlets were knocked off air. The issue was linked to a faulty update deployed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to computers running Microsoft Windows. This led to significant disruptions worldwide, impacting hospitals in Houston, Texas, Georgia’s driver services department, and various other services including airports, courts, health systems, and airlines.
In response, Maryland’s judiciary closed all courts, offices, and facilities to the public, while Brazilian bank Bradesco and airline Azul reported digital service instabilities. Mass General Brigham canceled all nonurgent care visits, and CVS Health Corp assured operations as normal. In the U.S., about 1,500 flights were canceled, but drugstores remained operational. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized for the impact caused, attributing the issue to a bug in the update sent to Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
Despite the widespread disruption, forecasting firm Capital Economics predicted minimal impact on the world economy, as it had not yet affected financial markets. However, cybersecurity analyst Richard Stiennon called it a historic mistake by CrowdStrike, with potentially long-lasting implications. In Michigan, nonessential county government operations were closed for the day, while Copa Airlines advised passengers in Panama to prepare for delays. South African airports remained unaffected, while some U.S. TV stations struggled to air local news. Universal Studios Japan also reported ticket sales disruptions, and General Motors experienced minor production interruptions.
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