South Africa’s largest bank. Europe’s major airports. The Waitrose cafe chain in London. Hospitals and doctor’s offices across the UK. Emergency services in the U.S. Public broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
All these and more services hit major operating obstacles somewhere between Thursday night and Friday morning as their Microsoft 360 programs got stuck and crashed, forcing airlines and medical services to resort to hand-written, paper boarding passes and medical orders, shops to cash-only purchases, and emergency dispatchers and first responders to communicate by paper and pencil. Long check-in lines ensued at airports and some flights were canceled, many a hungry customer had to forgo breakfast for lack of cash in their pocket, and those in need of help may have had to wait longer for it to arrive.
The problem, according to Microsoft, stemmed from an update of software from the cyber security company CrowdStrike, widely used by industries to protect their systems from hackers. This update, though, caused Microsoft 360 operating systems to get bogged down in the restarting state following a routine check for bugs in Microsoft 360 programs.
On its Azure Microsoft webpage, the software company explained the problem and offered workarounds to get systems back up and running.
For the tech geeks in charge of handling such glitches, it might just be another day at work and a bit more job security, but it reminds everyone else how vulnerable the world’s digital systems really are.
The threat from hackers is constant and the fight is not always successful, as a breach of Microsoft earlier this year demonstrated. On top of that, the “good guys,” as they are called in tech speak, can sometimes shoot themselves, and huge swaths of people along with them, in the foot, as the world witnessed on Friday.
