Banks, airlines, TV stations and health systems in countries around the world that rely on Microsoft’s 365 apps reported widespread outages Friday. Thousands of flights and train services were cancelled in the U.S. and Europe, and there were disruptions to many other public and retail services.
Microsoft 365 said on social media that it was “investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services” and that things were improving as the company worked to “reroute the affected traffic to healthy infrastructure.”
American Airlines, Delta, United Airlines and Spirit Airlines grounded all pending flight departures, though American Airlines lifted its ground stop later on Friday. American Airlines said the problem had been caused by “a technical issue with CrowdStrike” that it said was impacting multiple airlines.
CrowdStrike is a global cybersecurity firm. When CBS News called CrowdStrike’s technical support line on Friday, a pre-recorded message said the company was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft systems related to its Falcon sensor.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on social media later on Friday that the issue had been identified and a solution was being implemented.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” Kurtz said. “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
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The Swiss Federal Office for Cyber Security said earlier Friday that “a faulty update or misconfiguration by CrowdStrike is leading to these system outages,” in a statement to Reuters.
In Europe, Lufthansa, KLM and SAS Airlines reported disruptions. Switzerland’s largest airport, in Zurich, said planes were not being allowed to land, according to CBS News partner network BBC News.
In India, at the country’s primary airport in Delhi, everything was being done manually. No electric check-in terminals were functioning and gate information was being updated by hand on a white board, the BBC reported.
Hospitals in Germany said they were cancelling elective surgeries Friday and doctors in the U.K. said they were having issues accessing their online booking system. Pharmacists in the U.K. said there were disruptions with medicine deliveries and accessing prescriptions.
Britain’s Sky News and the BBC’s TV network aimed at children both went off the air on Friday, though Sky came back up — with presenters reading from printed notes rather than off of teleprompters as they normally would.
New Zealand’s acting prime minister David Seymour said on social media that officials were working hard to understand the impacts of the outages.
“I have not currently received any reporting to indicate these issues are related to malicious cyber security activity,” Seymour said.
A spokesman for Germany’s interior ministry also said there was no indication that the outages were due to a cyberattack, Reuters reported.
This is a developing news story and will be updated.