CNN
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Business is gradually recovering, butThe biggest IT outage in history” disrupted industries around the world, leaving thousands of passengers stranded in airports, cutting off emergency communication services and preventing blood donation centers from receiving vital supplies.
Airlines, corporations, government agencies, health and emergency services, banks, schools and universities around the world Faulty software updates For Microsoft Windows operating systems, issued by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike an expert told CNN..
CrowdStrike’s CEO said a fix had been distributed, but Experts say It will be a long process to restore the system to its original state.
The outage affected an estimated 8.5 million Windows devices, which represents less than 1% of all Windows machines. Saturday Blog Post “Although a small percentage, the broader economic and societal impact reflects CrowdStrike’s use by companies that operate many essential services,” Microsoft said.
More than 1,000 flights to, from or within the United States were reported, according to tracking website FlightAware. cancel As of Saturday morning, more than 2,000 deliveries were delayed.
More than 3,000 flights were canceled and over 11,000 were delayed on Friday, it said. Flight Aware.
Major airlines around the world have announced that services are being restored.
Most of United’s systems have been restored from Friday’s outage, the airline said. It said in a statement.
United Airlines said in a statement that “most of our systems have recovered from the global third-party software issue, but we may continue to experience operational disruptions, including flight delays or cancellations.”
Delta Airlines is “continuing to restore operations” after suspending flights on Friday due to the outage, a report said Saturday. morning Update: Still, more than 600 Delta flights were canceled Saturday.
“Additional cancellations are expected as some of Delta’s technology continues to recover from a vendor-issued issue Friday morning,” the update said.
Jetstar Japan, Hong Kong Express Airways and Cebu Pacific also announced on Saturday that operations were gradually being restored.
Frustrated passengers queueing at airports due to cancelled and delayed flights mean some are missing funerals, birthdays and other important events.
One passenger who spent more than 19 hours at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport won’t be returning to his home in Los Angeles anytime soon.
“The system was down so I couldn’t rebook on another flight and I didn’t get any vouchers for meals or hotels or anything,” Kia Hampton told CNN on Friday afternoon.
Hampton said he slept on the floor at the airport after his previous flight was cancelled on Thursday night, adding: “Looks like I’m going to have to sleep here tonight.”
Jennifer Small of New Jersey also spent the night at the airport and had two flights canceled.
“I want to go home to my son. I want to go home to New Jersey,” Small said, adding that she doesn’t think she’ll be able to return until Saturday.
Thousands of people packed airports across the country, waiting for answers. Passenger Ty Kelly, who was traveling to Philadelphia to attend a funeral, described it as a chaotic scene.
“It’s so crowded, so noisy, and I’m nervous right now,” she said. “I’m going to wait in this long line and try to get to Philadelphia today.”
Another passenger told CNN she was traveling to Boston with her young child for a birthday party. “It was frustrating to say the least,” Spirit Airlines passenger Miya Haney said.
The problems weren’t limited to airports: Americans felt the effects of the outages in many aspects of daily life, including calling 911 during emergencies in some areas, getting or renewing a driver’s license, and sending or receiving packages.
911 systems in various states, including Alaska, and cities, including Phoenix, were reported to have been down for hours but later restored.
Driver’s License Office Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia were closed or had limited service.
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Meanwhile, thousands of businesses around the world struggled to process payments as the outage took down a wide range of systems, including major hotel chains including Marriott International and some Hilton hotels.
Cybercriminals have taken advantage of the confusion to promote fake websites packed with malicious software designed to put unsuspecting victims at risk. According to warnings from the U.S. government and several cybersecurity experts,.
Former McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt told CNN that a group of private sector and government agencies worked through the night to “identify the threat” and find a solution to the global outage. The meetings also included the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other private and government agencies.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz Apologized The company notified customers about the outages on Friday and said it was working with those affected.
“We understand the gravity of the situation and deeply apologize for any inconvenience and trouble caused,” Kurtz posted on X. “We are working with all affected customers to get our systems back up and running so we can provide the service you expect.”
But that may not be as easy as it sounds: manually rebooting individual systems requires time and expertise that some customers don’t have, which is why it took companies longer to recover from the outage.
CrowdStrike offered customers “full transparency” about how the outage occurred and promised to “make sure this never happens again.”
Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images
A traveler looks at a screen displaying delayed and canceled flights at Delta Airlines Terminal 2 at Los Angeles Airport on Friday.
Some hospitals have had to cancel appointments and surgeries.
While most hospitals stayed open to respond to medical emergencies, some canceled patient appointments and surgeries because they couldn’t access electronic medical records or order tests or prescriptions.
Hospital staff scrambled to provide patients with the care they needed without the technology they relied on.
Kim Brown, a labor and delivery nurse at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in San Jose, California, was nearing the end of her shift Thursday night when the hospital’s computer system, which she relies on to care for women and their babies during labor, went down.
“All of our babies have little plastic tags that sound an alarm if they get too close to an exit or an elevator, and it worked,” Brown said. “It was scary because we had no information. It was just like, ‘Oh my goodness, they’re all out now.'”
As the power outage could pose a safety risk to newborns, the hospital has requested that security guards be posted near the elevators to ensure the safety of newborns.
Laura Topete, a nurse practitioner in the postpartum care unit at Dignity Health California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles, said she tried to get painkillers for women in pain after giving birth but was stumped because she couldn’t access doctor’s orders for what medications to prescribe.
“Patients were in pain for longer than they needed to be,” Topete said.
Epic Systems, which makes electronic medical records systems widely used by hospitals and clinics, said on Friday that its cloud-based platform, Nebula, was affected by an outage last night, during which some services, including telehealth visits, were unavailable. Another electronic medical records company, Veradigm, also said its systems were affected by the CrowdStrike outage.
A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said the agency is working with federal, state, local and private sector partners “to assess the impact of the CrowdStrike outage on patient care and Department of Health and Human Services systems, services, and operations.”
In addition to hospitals, blood donation centers also faced challenges from flight delays and changed how they transport blood. The New York Blood Center, which supplies about 200 hospitals in the Northeast, launched emergency drives to distribute blood it had collected. And Blood Assurance said flight problems had jeopardized plans to transport at least 20 million platelets, the disc-shaped fragments that help blood clot.
The government was at a standstill.
The global technology outage affected the entire US, leaving countless government agencies waiting for services to return to normal.
The mayor of Portland, Oregon, has declared a state of emergency following the ongoing power outage, which Mayor Ted Wheeler said in a news release affected servers in the city’s data center, employee computers and single sign-on to cloud services.
In Southern California, the disruptions caused connectivity issues at Los Angeles County Superior Court and temporarily limited inmate capacity at San Diego County jails, authorities said.
Meanwhile, some polling places in Arizona’s Maricopa County, the fourth-most populous county in the US and home to Phoenix, lost power as early voting continued in the state’s primary election, according to the elections department, according to its website.
The Social Security Administration closed several local offices on Friday after the outage caused numerous service outages. The agency said in a statement that people should expect longer wait times at its national 800 number and that some online services may be unavailable.
