Passengers wait to be checked-in at Hong Kong International Airport
New Delhi:
Airlines, banks and businesses across the world were scrambling today to deal with one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program. The US grounded all planes briefly; flights in other nations were affected.
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Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting users of its Azure cloud platform running cybersecurity software CrowdStrike Falcon. “We recommend customers that are able to, to restore from a backup from before this time,” the US software giant said in a technical update on its website.
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CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said in a post on several social media platforms that a fix had been rolled out for the problem, describing it as a “defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts”.
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From Amsterdam to Zurich, Singapore to Hong Kong, airport operators flagged technical issues that were disrupting their services. Some airports told planes they could not land, while in others airline staff began checking in passengers manually.
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In India, several airports issued handwritten boarding passes to passengers. Many IndiGo flights in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Hyderabad airports were cancelled and rescheduled.
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Civil Aviation Minister Rammohan Naidu said the ministry and Airports Authority of India (AAI) are actively managing the situation using manual methods to ensure minimal disruption. “Passengers are advised to cooperate with airport staff during this period of disruption. We have instructed all airlines and airport authorities to keep passengers informed about their flight status and provide necessary assistance,” he said.
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The global nature of the software failure prompted some commentators to question the reliance on a single provider for such a variety of services. Shares in CrowdStrike slumped by 20 per cent in pre-market trading.
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Companies were left patching up their systems and trying to assess the damage from the outage, even as officials tried to tamp down any panic. “There is no evidence to suggest that this outage is the result of a cyberattack,” France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI said.
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Reports from both the Netherlands and Britain suggested health services may have been affected by the disruption, meaning the impact could eventually be even wider. Media companies were also struggling, with Britain’s Sky News saying the glitch had ended its morning news broadcasts and Australia’s ABC similarly reporting a major “outage”.
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Banks in Kenya and Ukraine reported difficulties with some digital services, supermarkets in Australia had issues with payments, mobile phone carriers were disrupted and customer services in a number of companies went down.
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Asian and European stock markets mostly sank after the outage rocked global computer systems. The London Stock Exchange saw a delayed start to trading due to the glitch, which also affected airports, airlines, trains, banks, shops and even doctors’ surgeries.
With inputs from AFP
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