Global Tech Outages

[Malcolm]

AIRLINES, AIRPORTS

- Berlin airport has halted all flights until 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) due to a technical fault, the operator said.

- Spanish airport operator Aena (AENA.MC), opens new tab reported a computer systems "incident" at all Spanish airports which may cause flight delays.

 

- Amsterdam's airport Schiphol, one of the major air transport hubs in Europe, said it was affected by a global cyber outage, and advised travellers to contact their airlines.

- Top Dutch airline KLM (AIRF.PA), opens new tab said it could not handle flights on Friday and that it suspended most of its operations. Air France, KLM's parent company, said that its operations were disrupted.

- Turkish Airlines is experiencing problems with ticketing, check-in, and booking due to a global technical issue in its information systems, it said in a post on X.

A line of travellers at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. The airport advised passengers flights could be delayed or cancelled Friday after a global outage of Crowdstrike cybersecurity software.
A line of travellers at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. The airport advised passengers flights could be delayed or cancelled Friday after a global outage of Crowdstrike cybersecurity software.
© Manusha Janakiram/CBC
Porter Airlines has cancelled flights until noon and some hospital patients are experiencing delays Friday as Toronto grapples with the effects of a worldwide IT issue. 

The city's 911 and paramedic services are working as they should, and the TTC said its signal and safety systems are fully operational. If anything changes, the transit agency said it will let riders know. 

Similarly, Metrolinx said its trains and buses are running, however you may have issues updating your Presto payment account. 

Major banks and media outlets have had their services interrupted — although some CBC Radio programs are still on the air if you want to tune in for live updates.

The University Health Network, which runs a number of hospitals in the city, confirmed it is dealing with challenges. "Clinical activity is continuing as scheduled, but some patients may experience delays," it said in a statement.
According to an alert sent by global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, the company's Falcon Sensor software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the "blue screen of death."

Crowdstrike's CEO said on X, formerly Twitter, the issue has been "identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed" but it's unclear how long that will take. 

Related video: Global tech outage affecting flights at Pearson airport (Global News)
Toronto Pearson says a global IT outage is impacting some
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Global News
Global tech outage affecting flights at Pearson airport
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Porter's not the only airline that may be affected. A spokesperson from Toronto's Pearson Airport told CBC News the impacts varied "airline to airline," with but several American carriers seeing disruptions.

"We are continuing to work with our airline partners as the global IT outage impacts some airlines. Travellers may notice the terminals are busier than normal this morning as we anticipate connecting 135,000 passengers today," Pearson said in a statement.

Porter, meanwhile, is working on a plan for its passengers.

"Passengers cannot be rebooked while systems are offline. The rebooking process will take a period of time, with new flights confirmed over a number of days due to high passenger volume," Porter said in a statement.

"Further delays and cancellations are possible," it warned. 

- Major U.S. carriers including American Airlines (AAL.O), opens new tab, Delta Airlines (DAL.N), opens new tab and United Airlines (UAL.O), opens new tab issued ground stops on Friday morning citing communication issues.

- A SAS spokesperson said the Scandinavian airline was expecting delays.

- Australia's national airline Qantas (QAN.AX), opens new tab and Sydney airport said planes were delayed but still flying.

- Passengers at Britain's Edinburgh Airport were unable to use automated boarding pass scanners on Friday, and monitors at security displayed a message saying "server offline", a Reuters witness reported.

- Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific (0293.HK), opens new tab said in a note to customers that self-service check in facilities at Hong Kong International Airport were unavailable due to "unexpected technical issues". It advised customers to arrive early or check in online before coming to the airport.

FINANCIALS

- Australia's largest bank, Commonwealth Bank (CBA.AX), opens new tab, said some customers had been unable to transfer money due to the service outage.

 

Widespread technology outage disrupts flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world (msn.com)

Watch: Huge queues and delays at airports worldwide
A mass IT outage has caused travel chaos all around the world, with many flights grounded, huge queues and delays at airports.
Several airports and airlines have reported issues with their IT systems.
Berlin airport posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it is experiencing delays to check-ins due to a "technical fault", and in Spain, an "incident" has been reported at all of the country's airports.
Cyber-security firm Crowdstrike says the problem was caused by a "defect" in one of its software updates.
Follow live updates on the global outage here

•  

[Malcolm]

Three major US carriers have so far requested a ‘ground stop’ (Picture: Getty)© Provided by Metro

Planes operated by several US airlines are being ordered to stay in the air due to major worldwide IT outages.

The American air regulator said American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines requested a ‘global ground stop’ in the early hours on Friday.

This means pilots in the air will be told not to land, while planes on runways cannot take off.

 

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The NHS, Sky News and British rail operators are among a rapidly growing list of service around the world suffering disruption linked to malfunctioning anti-hacking software, with experts warning the chaos could last for days.

Air travel across the world is being affected, with issues including flight delays and check-in problems reported at airports from Manchester to Melbourne and by global airlines including Virgin.

New York Times reporter Jordyn Holman said she was stuck at Seoul Airport in South Korea waiting to board a Delta flight.

‘Unusually, the pilot came out to talk to a group of passengers, attributing the problem to a Microsoft platform,’ she said.

‘He said he had never had to make an announcement like this before.’

The US government warned that 911 lines were also affected in several states, urging people to instead directly call their local police or fire department.

 

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A common problem appeared to be crashes of computers running on Microsoft’s Windows operating system, with users experiencing the infamous ‘blue screen of death’.

Downed services include Microsoft’s entire cloud service, which huge numbers of firms rely on across the globe, though the company says that outage has been resolved.

The chaos is being linked to cybersecurity software run by Texas-based firm CrowdStrike.

In a statement, CrowdStrike said it was ‘aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts’ relating to one of its services.

The company said it had ‘identified’ and ‘reverted’ changes related to the problem but admitted machines could still crash or go offline.

It provided a four-step solution to the problem using Windows’ ‘Safe Mode’ to delete a file installed on their system as part of CrowdStrike’s software.

The chaos could last ‘several days’ due to how the problem has to be fixed manually, explains Professor Alan Woodward, a cyber security specialist at the University of Surrey.

 

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Prof Woodward told Metro: ‘Based on what we know at the moment the main problem appears to be a result of an update by a product called Crowdstrike Falcon.

‘This is used to monitor the security of a large network PCs. To do that it downloads a piece of software called an “agent” to every machine. This monitors the PC and reports back problems.

‘This agent included a so called system file that means it is deeply embedded in the operating system. This update was corrupted in some way (we do not yet know what kind of error) so that as the PC tries to boot it comes across the corrupted file and can’t proceed – it puts up the so called Blue Screen of Death.

‘The product is used by large organisations that have significant numbers of PCs to ensure everything is monitored. Sadly if they lose all the PCs, they can’t operate or only at a much reduced service level.

 

‘The major frustration is that to fix the issue will require manual intervention on every affected PC. That will mean enormous delays in recovering and hence disruption for days to come.

‘Expect disruption in airports, railways, airlines, hospitals and a host of other institutions over several days. It raises questions about how this could be released without testing sufficiently.

‘The scale of this is truly global and because of the way it is likely to be fixed (manually rather than remotely) the disruption could be several days.’

In a statement given to ABC News, American Airlines said: ‘We’re aware of a technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple carriers.

‘American is working with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.’

Dr Paul Parry, Associate Head, School of Computing and Digital Technologies at Sheffield Hallam University, stressed that huge efforts will be being made to reduce disruption across the world.

 

He told Metro: ‘First investigations indicate, thankfully, that this is not a malicious attack, but the result of an error in a software patch by an anti-virus supplier. We all update our computers and phones on a regular basis, and much of this now happens behind the scenes, so users don’t have do anything, but in this case, the update was faulty and has caused countless computers to fail.

‘We’ve seen reports of airlines around the world being unable to process departures, flights grounded, and airports in the UK and across Europe and Asia being affected. It’s not only airlines either – banks in Germany, supermarkets in the UK, the 911 emergency service in the US state of the Alaska, are all affected. And the list appears to be growing.’

 

Dr Paul Parry has been watching the IT outage chaos unfold across the world© Provided by Metro

He adds: ‘There’s no need to be too concerned though, unless you’re directly affected by it; it’s not a “Terminator” scenario where Skynet is trying to take over the world’s machines.

‘This is just another unfortunate, and probably very costly IT error that escaped when it shouldn’t have.’

 

James Davenport, Hebron & Medlock Professor of Information Technology at Bath University, said the disruption is unlikely to stretch beyond the weekend.

He tells Metro: ‘I’d be surprised if it’s a couple days. I hope it can be cleared out within 24 hours, perhaps later today or by tomorrow morning. It depends very much on individual companies who may have their own policies on decimating it [the outage].

 

 

‘My immediate advice to anyone is don’t reboot. Wait for it to flush through the system. Ideally we’ll get a joint statement from Microsoft and Crowdstrike saying the situation is resolved.’

A UK government security source told the Reuters news agency the incident is not being treated as a cyber attack.

[Malcolm]

 

An Embraer aircraft of the Dutch airline KLM takes off from Dresden International Airport. Dutch airline KLM said a global computer outage has made© DPA International

Dutch airline KLM said a global computer outage has made "flight handling impossible" and is largely suspending its operations.

Airlines and airports around the globe have been affected by IT problems.

"KLM and other airlines and airports have been affected by a global computer outage, making flight handling impossible," the airline said in a statement.

"We realize that this is very inconvenient for our customers and staff, particularly in the midst of the summer holiday season. We're working hard to resolve the problem. Until then, we will have to largely suspend operations."

In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration has stopped flights by major airlines United, American and Delta.

German airports in Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Cologne-Bonn and Nuremberg were reporting various degrees of service disruptions.

 

 

Dutch airline KLM said a global computer outage has made "flight handling impossible" and is largely suspending its operations.

Airlines and airports around the globe have been affected by IT problems.

"KLM and other airlines and airports have been affected by a global computer outage, making flight handling impossible," the airline said in a statement.

 

"We realize that this is very inconvenient for our customers and staff, particularly in the midst of the summer holiday season. We're working hard to resolve the problem. Until then, we will have to largely suspend operations."

In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration has stopped flights by major airlines United, American and Delta.

German airports in Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Cologne-Bonn and Nuremberg were reporting various degrees of service disruptions.

 

[Malcolm]

The Ryanair website and online check-in system are not working.© Getty Images, NurPhoto

Ryanair is experiencing significant disruptions due to a global IT system outage. Ticket sales and online check-in for flights with the low-cost airline are unavailable. The carrier has issued a statement.

"We're currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a global third party IT outage which is out of our control,'' Ryanair said. "We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least three hours before their scheduled departure time," Ryanair said.

 

OUTFANY

[Specs]

This article gets my nod for most entertaining

Planes ordered not to land amid global Microsoft outage (msn.com)

[Malcolm]

1 minute ago, Specs said:

This article gets my nod for most entertaining

Planes ordered not to land amid global Microsoft outage (msn.com)

Thank goodness for the "Secret Hover Mode"

[deicer]

[deicer]

[Malcolm]

29 minutes ago, deicer said:

Funny  pictures but the problem was not the fault of Microsoft.  

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized for a global tech failure that disrupted multiple industries on Friday, vowing to work with all of its customers as they work to get their operations back online.

"We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our company," he told NBC News' "Today" program.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike(opens in a new tab) says they've isolated the issue behind the outage and that it wasn't a cyberattack — they also say a fix is on the way.

The software detects and blocks hacking threats, but like other cybersecurity products, it requires deep-level access to a computer’s operating system

"The irony is they're a cyber security company… they certainly didn't provide a lot of security here," says Levy.

When will it be fixed?

So how long could a fix take? According to Levy, it may take systems a while to recover, even after CrowdStrike is able to roll back the affected update and deploy a fix.

"It's never as fast as we wish," he says. "The problem here is, is that it's going to take a while for all of those devices that have been affected to be reverted back to where they were before this."

Many millions of computers use the affected software, Levy warns, and that's one of the factors that will complicate a recovery once a fix is completed.

"It'll take hours for the machines themselves to reboot and get back online," Levy says. "It'll probably take even longer than that to undo all of the damage that was caused when all of these devices went down."

[Malcolm]

• Reboot camp: It’s the CrowdStrike software update wot did it. The cybersecurity firm’s action grounded flights, forced broadcasters off air, disrupted market trading and left customers without access to healthcare, banking and many other services. Experts and analysts, as you might expect, are warning of the perils of an increasingly connected online world.

[conehead]

[Malcolm]

 

By David Shepardson

(Reuters) - Delta Air Lines canceled more than 600 flights on Monday, as the U.S. air carrier continued to struggle to restore operations after last week's global cyber outage, even as other airlines were recovering from the incident.

About 16% of Delta's flights had been canceled as of 7:00 a.m. EST, according to data from FlightAware, out of roughly 1,100 flights to or from the United States overall, the web site said.

 

The issue has stranded thousands of Delta travelers across the United States, with some having to rent cars to drive hundreds of miles while others could have to wait days for new flights or cancel trips altogether.

The Atlanta-based airline is battling operational issues after the outage hit its crew tracking system. Delta's total number of canceled flights since Friday has exceeded 5,000.

A Delta spokesperson did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

A software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered system problems for Microsoft customers, including many airlines, on Friday.

Although other U.S. airlines have largely recove

Delta CEO Ed Bastian said over the weekend that the CrowdStrike issue affected its Microsoft Windows systems, snarling a critical application.

"One of our crew tracking-related tools was affected and unable to effectively process the unprecedented number of changes triggered by the system shutdown," Bastian told customers in an email.

In a separate note, he told employees that Delta would continue to "tactically adjust" schedules to ensure safety.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke with Bastian over the weekend, according to an official, reminding him of the carrier's responsibilities to customers and the department's enforcement role.

CrowdStrike said a significant number of the 8.5 million affected Microsoft devices were back online.

(Reporting By David Shepardson; Editing by Kirsten Donov

[Airband]

and they say the airlines are pikers when it comes to paying out compensation...

'CrowdStrike offers a $10 Uber Eats gift card to say sorry for outage'