Microsoft software outage disrupts multiple services worldwide

71

Millions of people around the globe have been affected by widespread Microsoft software outage. It has impacted IT network of multiple businesses, banking services and international airlines worldwide. In India, check-in systems for IndiGo, Akasa, and SpiceJet airlines are down nationwide. The airline across the globe reported that their check-in systems is experiencing a global outage since morning. They are currently collaborating with Microsoft to resolve the issue. The Mumbai airport has been the hardest hit, while the impact at Delhi airport remains minimal, with most disruptions occurring in Terminal 2.

The outage also caused the grounding and cancellation of flights across the United States. The ongoing widespread outage is reportedly related to US-based cyber security provider CrowdStrike. Its ‘Falcon sensor’ is installed on many business computers to gather security data. “CrowdStrike in a statement on its website said that it is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon sensor. Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bug check and blue screen error related to the Falcon sensor. The company said, their engineering teams are actively working to resolve the issue. Many users in India as well have reported an outage in Microsoft services on Downdetector. The IT issues are also affecting other countries, with outages reported from New Zealand and Japan.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has issued an advisory in the wake of the Microsoft Windows outage. The advisory said that it has been reported that Windows hosts related to Crowd strike agent Falcon Sensor, are facing outages and getting crashed due to recent update received in the product. It added that the concerned Windows hosts are experiencing a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), related to Falcon Sensor. The issues occurred in the latest update of CrowdStrike and the changes have been reverted by the CrowdStrike Team. The advisory added that if hosts are still crashing and unable to stay online to receive the Channel File Changes, certain steps can be used as work around for this, including booting Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment and booting the host normally. It also advised the users to check the latest updates from Crowd Strike portal.

Meanwhile, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that his Ministry is in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage. He said the reason for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue. The Minister also informed that the National Informatics Centre’s network is not affected.

Comments are closed.