An outage has hit computers around the world, affecting airlines, hospitals, retailers and other businesses. Adding to the confusion is that there have been two issues involving Microsoft systems in quick succession, and some users may be affected by both of them.
On Thursday, some Microsoft clients in the central United States, including some airlines, were affected by an outage on its cloud service system, Azure. Microsoft’s cloud service status page indicated the company had identified a preliminary cause.
Some users may still be unable to access certain Microsoft 365 apps and services, including Teams video conferencing. The company was aware of the issue “affecting a subset of customers,” a Microsoft representative said in a statement. “We acknowledge the impact this can have on customers, and we are working to restore services for those still experiencing disruptions as quickly as possible.”
Separately, on Friday many Windows devices experienced problems involving CrowdStrike, according to the Azure status page. “We’re aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform,” according to the representative. “We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming.”
That outage was caused by a flawed security update by CrowdStrike. George Kurtz, the chief executive of CrowdStrike, said in a statement that the company was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.” He added: “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
The issue appeared to be with an update to CrowdStrike software called Falcon Sensor, according to Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity researcher and consultant.
An updated fix of the software has been sent to computers, but Mr. Olejnik said outages would probably persist because it was not clear how to fix computers that had already been affected.
“There is a workaround, but it requires manually tampering with Windows systems files in recovery mode,” he said. “Such practice is in general not advised ordinarily, as mistakes may cause other problems.”
He added that major companies could probably make the fixes more quickly.
The outages, which shut down airlines, hospitals and emergency response services across the globe, indicate how fragile technology systems can be when they are so interdependent. “One mistake, or malicious tampering, may impact millions of people and cause huge money loss,” Mr. Olejnik said.