Flights resume after global IT crash causes chaos worldwide

PARIS: Planes gradually took off again on Saturday after airlines, banks and media worldwide were thrown into turmoil by one of the worst IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program.

Airports and major institutions around the world faced significant disruptions on Friday following a global IT crash caused by a cybersecurity program update, leading to widespread flight cancellations and operational chaos.

The incident began affecting systems on Thursday evening, impacting Microsoft Windows users running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity software. The update caused systems to crash, resulting in what is commonly referred to as a “blue screen of death” error message.

On Saturday, many affected airports and institutions reported that operations were gradually returning to normal. Airports in Germany and France, crucial hubs for international travel, were among those seeing improvements as they prepared for the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris.

In the United States, the issue initially led to the grounding of flights, but the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) later allowed airlines to resume flights, although delays and congestion continued.

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm responsible for the buggy update, apologized for the disruption. In a blog post Saturday, the company acknowledged that the issue stemmed from a software update released Thursday night. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz personally apologized and assured the public that a fix had been implemented to address the issue.

“We want to offer our personal apologies to every organization, every group, every individual that was affected,” Kurtz said in an interview with CNBC.

CrowdStrike warned that despite the rollout of a fix, it could take several days for operations to return to full normal.

The White House confirmed that President Joe Biden’s team was in contact with CrowdStrike and the affected parties to provide assistance as needed. The scale of the disruption raised concerns about cybersecurity vulnerabilities and possible phishing attempts to target those affected by the outage.

There are said to be problems with healthcare in the Netherlands and Great Britain, while media such as Sky News in the United Kingdom and ABC in Australia experienced problems with broadcasting and business operations.

Experts stressed the unprecedented scale of the outage and pointed to the potential long-term implications for the resilience of IT infrastructure and cybersecurity protocols worldwide.

“While experienced users can implement workarounds, it is impractical to expect millions of people to do so,” said Oli Buckley, a professor at Loughborough University.

According to John McDermid, a professor at York University, the incident has led to calls to reevaluate the dependency on critical software systems and emphasize the need for greater resilience against common failures.