On Friday, Windows users around the globe were met with the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) after being logged out of their systems due to a significant outage. This widespread “cyber pandemic,” dubbed a “Windows holiday,” has severely disrupted several global institutions, impacting the stock market, banks, and airports.
Outage Originates from Azure Services
Microsoft reported that the outage began at approximately 6 PM ET on Thursday, affecting some customers using multiple Azure services in the Central US region. The American cybersecurity technology company also acknowledged issues stemming from its Falcon sensor. “CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor,” the company stated.
“Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bugcheck\blue screen error related to the Falcon Sensor. Our Engineering teams are actively working to resolve this issue and there is no need to open a support ticket,” the company continued.
CEO addresses concerns
CrowdStrike’s CEO, George Klutz, reassured users, “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.” He further explained that the BSOD error was due to a defect “in a single content update for Windows hosts.” Meanwhile, Microsoft 365 issued a statement on social media, acknowledging the issue: “We are investigating an issue impacting users’ ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services. We are working to reroute the affected traffic to healthy infrastructure.”
Impacted areas and services
DownDetector.com, a website that monitors real-time problem and outage reports, displayed a heat map showing user-submitted problem reports over the past 24 hours. The outage map highlighted several US cities, with significant impacts in:
- Seattle and Boston (highlighted in yellow)
- Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, areas around Tampa, and areas around New York (vibrant orange shade)
- St. Louis, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Houston (slight red shade)
- Chicago, Washington, and New York (huge red marks)
Affected industries
The fallout from the Microsoft outage was far-reaching:
- Airlines: Major airlines such as American, Delta, and United Airlines grounded flights due to communication difficulties. Frontier Airlines, Allegiant, and SunCountry also reported issues.
- News Agencies: The Associated Press, an American not-for-profit news agency based in New York City, reported “service disruption.”
- Cloud Services: Azure was particularly severely impacted.
- Financial Institutions: Banks and other financial institutions faced significant disruptions.
Services like the Microsoft 365 admin centre, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Purview, PowerBI, and Viva Engage were primarily affected. The full scope and lasting impact of this outage remain to be seen, as both Microsoft and CrowdStrike work to resolve the issues and restore normalcy to the affected sectors.