Shankul Bhandare
Television channels, airports, and banks worldwide experienced a massive outage causing Windows computers to shut down unexpectedly.
Sky News’s breakfast show was off the air on Friday morning, replaced by archive footage.
Downdetector, a site monitoring outages, reported sudden spikes in issues with Microsoft applications, banking websites, and airline apps.
Ryanair’s website urged passengers to arrive at airports three hours early, citing a “third-party IT issue, outside Ryanair’s control, affecting all airlines operating across the network.”
Users reported problems across Australia, New Zealand, India, and Japan, with the UK likely to be heavily impacted during Friday’s rush hour.
Cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt noted “something super weird happening right now” as individuals worldwide reported their Windows computers suddenly displaying the “blue screen of death” and entering recovery mode.
Cybersecurity engineers indicated a problem with Crowdstrike antivirus software, which seemed to be causing computers to crash.
Senad Arun, founder of cyber research company Imperum, called the incident “Crowdstrike Doom’s Day.”
In a statement, Crowdstrike said: “Crowdstrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows related to the Falcon Sensor.”
