Widespread Microsoft outage disrupts flights, banks globally

A widespread outage in Microsoft computer systems disrupted flights and banking, among other services, around the world on Friday.

The “blue screen of death” appeared on Windows workstations across the globe, indicating a systems crash.

Experts soon identified the cause of this as a faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike. This caused the glitch in computers and offline servers, forcing them into a recovery boot loop so machines cannot start properly, reported The Verge.

CrowdStrike acknowledged the problem in a support note to its customers. “We have widespread reports of blue screen of death on Windows hosts, occurring on multiple sensor versions,” it said.

It said that it has identified the problem and reverted the faulty update, but that has not helped machines that have already been impacted, The Verge reported.

Several airlines in India, including Air India, IndiGo, SpiceJet and Akasa Air, reported that their systems across the network had been hurt by the outage.

No electronic terminals were available for check-in at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, the BBC reported. Passengers were being given blank boarding cards and asked to fill out the information by hand. Information on baggage tags was also being added manually.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union electronics and information technology minister, said that the government was in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the...

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