Systems running Microsoft Windows software were affected by a major global outage due to a configuration that caused PCs to crash with the “Blue Screen of Death.”
The BBC reported that Sky News and a number of airlines, including KLM, were affected by the outage. Some services are now back up and running, but others are still being repaired.
Microsoft 365 was also offline as of 10pm last night due to what the company said was a “configuration change”. Service has been restored, but as of 9 a.m. today, many Microsoft products were still affected. There are also numerous reports online that Microsoft users around the world, including governments and airlines, have experienced service outages.
The configuration change is believed to be related to CrowdStrike cybersecurity.
Microsoft identified the root cause of the outage as configuration changes made to a portion of its Azure backend workloads, causing an outage between storage and compute resources, resulting in a connection failure that impacted downstream Microsoft 365 services that rely on these connections.
A user on X (formerly Twitter) posted a screenshot of the CrowdStrike support workaround, which the company said was related to its Falcon sensor. The company has also released an update available online, but some users may find that they are unable to get their PC to load Windows. The workaround recommended by CrowdStrike to get Windows working again involves booting your computer into Safe Mode and deleting a system file from the CrowdStrike folder. Users then have to restart the computer normally.
Commenting on the manual work done by IT technicians across public and private sector organizations that use Windows to resolve power outages on computers, Tom Henson, managing director of Emerge Digital, said: “There will be many highly skilled individuals working on solving the problem. This problem, in particular because of its impact on global infrastructure. They should be able to quickly stop the delivery of the problematic update to prevent it from affecting any other systems.
“If the systems are still accessible, pushing a new update will be sufficient. However, if the faulty software causes the systems to be completely offline, the solution could take a long time, as each company would need to manually roll back rather than receive an update.” From the vendor. Offline systems cannot be updated.”
The outage highlights the risks of having a single point of failure. Microsoft designed Windows so that Windows users receive automatic updates and security patches. Although this is useful in keeping computers safe from cyber attacks, if this update causes a computer to lock up, as happened with this recent outage, then PC administrators have a major incident to deal with.
“We often see isolated issues with large cloud platforms. If this is indeed a conflicting update issue, the fact that both applications are mainstream means it should not escape them. This incident is unlikely to be repeated by these vendors to this extent, but it highlights Highlight vulnerabilities in global infrastructure.
Mark Lloyd, business unit director at Axians UK, added: “This outage is a stark reminder of how reliant the world is on cloud services. From productivity tools to critical infrastructure, much of technology runs on cloud platforms. This outage shows the enormous power and reach of these services.
“Even the largest technology giants are not immune to disruption, and the need for robust disaster recovery and disaster recovery plans across the board is more important than ever.”
