Australian Airlines are Ground-Stop: A Deeper Look at Blue Screens of Death (BSODs) and a Third-Party IT Issue

Blue Screens of Death (BSODs) were reported by companies in Australia running Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Shortly after, reports of disruptions started flooding in from around the world, including from the UK, India, Germany, the Netherlands, and the US: TV station Sky News went offline, and US airlines United, Delta, and American Airlines issued a “global ground stop” on all flights.

Australian banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters first raised the alarm as thousands of machines started to go offline. The issues are now spreading, as businesses based in Europe are starting their working days. Sky News is not broadcast its morning news bulletin due to an interruption and a message is shown apologizing for the interruption. One of Europe’s largest airlines, Ryanair, says it is experiencing a third-party IT issue which is impacting flight departures.

The flights from Delta, United, and American Airlines are grounded because of a communication issue according to the FAA. Travel delays due to technical issues are listed at the Berlin airport. Problems with the emergency call centers in Alaska have been impacting them.

CrowdStrike, Microsoft and Reddit: What is the impact of a Microsoft Outage on Windows devices? A user’s voice voice on the frustration and frustration

In a Reddit thread, hundreds of IT admins are reporting widespread issues and the workaround steps involve booting affected Windows machines into safe mode and navigating to the CrowdStrike directory and deleting a system file. That will be troublesome on some cloud-based servers, or even for Windows laptops that are deployed and used remotely.

One poster says of the company as a whole, while another claims that 70% of their laptops are stuck in a boot loop. One poster on the site said Happy Friday. It looks like IT admins around the world will have a long day.

Microsoft is recovering from issues with its Microsoft 365 apps and services in what seems to be a separate outage. A configuration change in a portion of our Azure workloads is the root cause of those issues.

Airlines are forced to stop flights and businesses are forced to shut down because of widespread IT failures, after Windows machines have displayed errors around the world.

The incident, so far, appears to only be impacting devices running Windows and not other operating systems. It’s difficult to determine how widespread the issues are and how long they will take to resolve. WIRED asked Microsoft and CrowdStrike if they had anything to say about the outage.

A Microsoft spokesperson also issued a statement saying it is aware of the problems linked to Windows devices and the company believes a “resolution is forthcoming.”

CrowdStrike: Where is the blame? Where are the frustrations? How can we put trust on vendors? A case study of one passenger in India

The CrowdStrike update has led to a huge impact on businesses and public services around the world. Scores of airports are facing delays and long queues, with one passenger in India sharing a hand-written boarding pass that they have been issued.

It reminds us of our dependence on IT and software. “When a system has several software systems maintained by various vendors, this is equivalent to placing trust on them. They may be a single point of failure—like here, when various firms feel the impact.”