IT SYSTEMS WORLDWIDE have been hit by a outage as a result of a defect by cybersecurity giant Crowdstrike, which is causing delays to transport, difficulties to some banking systems and had even caused some TV stations to stop broadcasting.
The problem is being described as potentially the biggest IT outage in history. In Ireland, it has impacted Leap Cards and NCT services, as well as some flights into Ireland – though Dublin Airport has said it has said that its systems are not affected on a widespread basis.
Some systems have slowly come back to life on Friday evening but many are still down, as companies, governments and IT professionals rush to fix the problem.
Here’s how it played out today.
The liveblog was written by Christine Bohan, Rónán Duffy and Stephen McDermott over the course of the day.
Well, good morning!
In what has already been labelled ‘the biggest IT outage of all time’, computer systems across the world have been hit by a glitch that’s seemingly been caused by a security update.
Major infrastructure including airlines, train companies, banks and media outlets have ground to a halt after their computer systems were knocked offline or leaving devices showing the so-called “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD).
In the UK, Sky News went off air for a period and has returned without on-screen graphics and autocue for presenters.
Around the world, banks, supermarkets and other major institutions reported computer issues disrupting services, while many businesses have been left unable to take digital payments.
In Ireland, Dublin Airport currently largely unaffected by a global tech outage that has seen planes grounded at other airports and broadcasters and websites taken offline.
What do we know about the cause?
There are no indications that anything malicious has taken place.
Experts have said a flawed update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor software could be the source of the problem.CrowdStrike has not yet publicly confirmed any issue.
All Spanish airports, three Indian airlines, and the Netherlands’ airport Schiphol have all reported being significantly impacted by the outage.
Ryanair has said it is experiencing disruption across its network due to the outage. “We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours before their scheduled departure time,” the airline said in a statement.
Due to a global IT issue that is impacting airlines & airports worldwide @Ryanair has requested that their passengers arrive at the airport 3 hours prior to their flight. @DublinAirport & @CorkAirport teams are assisting passengers impacted. We thank everyone for their patience. https://t.co/xPaOPATJwk
— Kevin Cullinane (@kevin_cullinane) July 19, 2024
Whiteboards being used at @belfastairport as all the screens are blue. Passenger Martin McElroy took this, and told us that it's like “the dark ages, but to be fair they’re making it work, which you have to give them credit for.” #outage pic.twitter.com/FfSmEHCvuO
— Stephen Murphy (@SMurphyTV) July 19, 2024
Major US air carriers including Delta, United and American Airlines grounded all flights on over a communication issue, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
All airports in Spain were experiencing “disruptions” from an IT outage that has hit several companies worldwide on Friday, the airport operator Aena said.
The UK’s biggest rail operator meanwhile warned of possible train cancellations due to IT issues, while photos posted online showed large queues forming at Sydney Airport in Australia.
A spokesperson for Dublin Port has told The Journal that it is fully operational – there was some brief congestion this morning but this has now eased.
They added that there’s not one overall IT system and it would depend on each operator’s system if they’re impacted
Ireland’s National Cyber Security Centre has released this statement, primarily aimed at IT workers who may be encountering problems:
The NCSC is aware of an issue with falcon agent which may cause issues when booting machines. Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bugcheck or bluescreen error related to Falcon Sensor. CrowdStrike are actively working on a fix and there is no need to contact support.
There is a ‘workaround step’ which is very technical, too technical to detail here, but details are available here from the NCSC if required
Thousands of GP practices across England have been affected by the global IT outage, which has hampered the booking of appointments and issuing of prescriptions.
We’ve asked the HSE has it seen any impacts so far here. In a response, they’ve told us:
The HSE has not been impacted directly by these issues. We remain vigilant and our cyber teams continue to monitor the situation.
Microsoft has said a resolution for Windows devices affected was “forthcoming”.
It said: “We are aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming.”
One passenger spoke to The Journal from Heathrow Airport this morning, saying there were chaotic scenes after the outage.
“Screens were down for a time, queues everywhere and the British Airways systems were all down, too.”
They said it was a “shambles”. It’s understood screens are now back up and running at the airport.
Transport for Ireland has apologised to customers who are unable to use its TFI Live and TFI Leap Top-up mobile apps.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused this morning to our customers unable to use our TFI Live and TFI Leap Top-up mobile apps.
— Transport for Ireland (@TFIupdates) July 19, 2024
There is a global outage affecting multiple countries at the moment. We don't have an estimated resolution time
A spokesperson for TFI told The Journal that they do not believe the outage is impacting public transport services.
Meanwhile, spokespeople for Irish Rail and Dublin Bus have told The Journal that their systems have not been affected and are operating as normal.
The CEO of CrowdStrike, the US tech company which appears to be the cause of the fault, has just shared an update.
George Kurtz confirms that the issue is “not a security incident or cyberattack”, adding that it is affecting an update for Windows users:
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. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We…
— George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 19, 2024
Turkish Airlines is the latest carrier to confirm it’s been affected. Turkey’s state broadcaster has said that 84 of the airline’s flights have been cancelled amid problems with ticket booking and check-in.
Ireland’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has just issued a more lengthy statement, including details about a workaround for those affected (available here):
The NCSC is aware of a global incident concerning the latest update of CrowdStrike security software.
The NCSC is contacting its constituents and stakeholders to best ascertain the level of impact to systems in Ireland.
Whilst there are impacts in several sectors, all essential services continue to operate normally. Similarly, Government IT is not currently affected.
We are aware that there may be unexpected impacts to citizens arising from the incident, and we will continue to work with any providers affected to gain an understanding of how their systems may have been affected, and to provide assistance remediating the issue.
The update is causing what is commonly referred to as a ‘Blue Screen of Death’ or BSOD loop on Windows.
This is a system crash, where the Windows operating system can no longer operate.
CrowdStrike have identified the cause of this issue, and provided advice on how to restore using a workaround.
The issue is a worldwide one, affecting all CrowdStrike customers, and is not localised to Ireland.
One group that isn’t affected are Ireland’s air traffic controllers, who’ve said their operational systems are working normally:
— AirNav Ireland (@AirNav_Ireland) July 19, 2024
Minister for State Ossian Smyth, whose departmental responsibilities include cyber security, has told RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne programme that NCT and Leap Card services are among those affected in Ireland.
Here’s what we know so far:
Meanwhile in Belfast…
Whiteboards being used at @belfastairport as all the screens are blue. Passenger Martin McElroy took this, and told us that it's like “the dark ages, but to be fair they’re making it work, which you have to give them credit for.” #outage pic.twitter.com/FfSmEHCvuO
— Stephen Murphy (@SMurphyTV) July 19, 2024
News has emerged of the outage impacting another, somewhat unexpected, group: the organising committee of the Paris Olympics.
The committee says that the problem is affecting the accreditation system, with some people unable to pick up badges before next Friday’s opening ceremony on the River Seine.
The committee said the outage was not affecting ticket sales and that the Olympic torch relay would continue as planned.
“This does not call into question the security of access to critical and essential information,” Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris 2024 organising committee, has said.
Richard Ford, the Chief Technical Officer of Irish cyber security company Integrity360, has said that questions need to be asked about how the issue happened.
“CrowdStrike has had a catastrophic error that has taken a large percentage of the global IT systems offline,” he said.
“On the one hand it’s shown how large CrowdStrike’s market share is, but it’s also shown how fragile the interconnected world we live in can be.”
Another update from Ossian Smyth, the minister with responsibility for cyber security.
He has said that Chief Information Officers for the government met this morning to discuss the outage. Two government services have been impacted and are still down: NCT bookings and Leap Card online top-ups.
More pressingly, he also says that it’s still not clear when this will all be fixed. The next update from him will be at 4pm.
Government CIOs met this morning to share information on the impact of the #CloudStrike outage. Two govt services are down:
— Ossian Smyth TD (@smytho) July 19, 2024
1. NCT online booking -an alternative is to book by phone 01-4135992
2. Leap Card online top-up- an alternative is to top-up at a retailer or train station…
In another example of companies being practical in the face of the outage, Ryanair has been using print-outs to get information to passengers at impacted airports.
Here’s one given to people at Bordeaux Airport a short time ago. It says that a ‘small number’ of Ryanair flights have been cancelled due to the outage and gives advice to passengers on what to do if their flight is affected.
12-hour timelapse of American Airlines, Delta, and United plane traffic after what was likely the biggest IT outage in history forced a nationwide ground stop of the three airlines. pic.twitter.com/wwcQeiEtVe
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) July 19, 2024
CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz said the company would “make sure that every customer is fully recovered” from the ongoing global IT outage.
Speaking to NBC’s Today Show in the US, Kurtz said many firms were rebooting their computers and coming back online, but said it could still be “some time” before all systems had completely recovered.
“We’ve been on with our customers all night [US-time] and working with them – many of our customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up and operational because we fixed it on our end,” he said.
CrowdStrike founder and CEO @George_Kurtz explains on TODAY what led to the global computer outages that began earlier today. pic.twitter.com/O3nbVWuNPI
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 19, 2024
“Some of the systems that aren’t recovering, we’re working with them, so it could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover, but it is our mission to make sure that every customer is fully recovered and we’re not going to relent until we get every customer back to where they were and we’ll continue to protect them and keep the bad guys out of their systems.”
Asked if he ever thought an outage of this scale was possible, the CrowdStrike founder said: “Software is a very complex world and there’s a lot of interactions, and always staying ahead of the adversary is a tall task.”
Over to you: We want to hear from readers. Have you been affected by the unprecedented IT outage today? Send us a short message to tips@thejournal.ie describing how you’ve been impacted, along with a photo, video or screenshot if you have it.
The NHS in Britain has warned that the ‘majority of GP practices’ in England have been disrupted by the outage, with people unable to make appointments and patients being redirected to pharmacies instead.
We’ve checked the situation here and Irish GPs have been unaffected by the IT issues. The Irish College of General Practitioners told us that there has been no impact on GP services, with most GPs here working on local networks rather than cloud-based services.
One reassuring note amid the mild chaos, at least.
We mentioned earlier that only a small number of government services have been impacted by the outage. Minister of State Ossian Smyth has just confirmed that Leap Card top-ups are now back up and running.
Online bookings are still not working for NCTs, however, and anyone looking to book a test has been advised to ring instead (the phone number is 01 – 4135992).
The Minister also said that there are some problems with the National Driver Licence Service. “They’d hoped to resolve NDLS by 3pm but there are still some issues,” he said in a tweet.
We’re going to finish up our liveblog for now. We’ll still be covering what is being described as the largest IT outage in history, though – you can follow our news stories on the site as we keep track of how and when this is resolved, and whether any more companies are impacted in Ireland.
Thanks for sticking with us. Have a good – and hopefully glitch-free – Friday evening.
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