Updated at 2 pm with Crowdstrike statement
Malta International Airport warned travellers of delays on Friday as a result of an IT outage that grounded flights and disrupted businesses across the globe.
Large-scale businesses, including major banks, airlines, telecommunications, and companies, all suffered significant service disruptions as a result.
In a statement, MIA said it was working to avoid major disruptions to passengers but that delays “are expected”.
Wizz Air advised passengers to get to the airport at least three hours before their scheduled departure. Ryanair said passengers who have not yet checked in must do so in person at airports, as their online systems running Microsoft Windows were down.
Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday.
A Microsoft spokesperson told Times of Malta that two separate outages occurred simultaneously: the first happened in the US overnight and impacted Microsoft 365 and the company’s Azure platform, disrupting airlines.
“The second issue emerged in the past hours concerns a CloudStrike outage impacting Windows machines. While the two issues do not affect all markets, understandably, media are conflating the two issues,” the spokesperson said.
CloudStrike is a global cyber security and threat intelligence company and its outage is linked to one of its tools called Falcon, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Melbourne said.
“Falcon is what is known as an endpoint detection and response platform, which monitors the computers that it is installed on to detect intrusions (i.e. hacks) and respond to them,” Toby Murray explained.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company was working to restore service to those impacted by the Azure outage and was also working on a solution to fix problems related to the CloudStrike issue.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said in a post on several social media platforms that a fix had been rolled out for the problem, describing it as a “defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts”.
A Malta government spokesperson told Times of Malta that there is currently no known impact on government services provided through MITA.
Experts suggested applying the fix would not be straightforward.
And the global nature of the failure prompted some commentators to question the reliance on a single provider for such a variety of services.
Flight chaos
From Amsterdam to Zurich, Singapore to Hong Kong, airport operators flagged technical issues that were disrupting their services.
Some airports told planes they could not land, while in others airline staff began checking in passengers manually.
In Malta, passengers faced delays of up to 10 hours and some travellers complained about the heat and lack of seats at the departure lounge.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and all Spanish airports were also reported to be hit by the global IT outage. Air France said it is also suffering from the IT disruption, but not at Paris airports.
Major airports including Berlin, which had suspended flights earlier on Friday, said departures and arrivals were gradually resuming.
Turkish Airlines said it had cancelled 84 flights and other airlines reported booking systems had crashed.
Chinese state media, however, said Beijing’s airports had not been affected.
Irish airline Ryanair said that it was also experiencing network disruptions.
“We’re currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a global third-party IT outage which is out of our control. We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least three hours before their scheduled departure time,” the Dublin-based carrier said in a statement posted on X.
Major US air carriers including Delta, United and American Airlines grounded all flights on Friday over a communication issue, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Hong Kong’s airport also said some airlines had been affected, with its authority issuing a statement in which it linked the disruption to a Microsoft outage.
Banks, news broadcasting channels hit
Companies were left patching up their systems and trying to assess the damage from the outage, even as officials tried to tamp down any panic.
“There is no evidence to suggest that this outage is the result of a cyberattack,” France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI said.
The UK’s biggest rail operator also warned of possible train cancellations due to IT issues on Friday morning. Sky News channel said the glitch had ended its morning news broadcast.
The London Stock Exchange was hit by a technical glitch that delayed the start of trade and affected its market news service.
The LSE’s company news feed “is currently experiencing a third-party global technical issue, preventing news from being published,” it said in a statement.
“Technical teams are working to restore the service. Other services across the group, including London Stock Exchange, continue to operate as normal.”
The large-scale outage wrought havoc on IT systems across Australia and New Zealand too, causing travel delays, hampering television broadcasts, and forcing supermarket systems offline.
Some self-checkout terminals at one of Australia’s largest supermarket chains were rendered useless, displaying blue error messages.
Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator said the “large-scale technical outage” was caused by an issue with a “third-party software platform”, allaying initial fears of hacker involvement.
New Zealand media said banks and computer systems inside the country’s parliament were reporting issues.
Outage ‘affecting’ Paris Olympics IT operations
Paris Olympics organisers said on Friday they were experiencing problems linked to a major worldwide computer systems outage, a week before the Games’ opening ceremony takes place.
“Paris 2024 is aware of global technical issues affecting Microsoft software. These issues are impacting Paris 2024’s IT operations,” organisers said.
“Paris 2024’s technical teams have been fully mobilised to mitigate the impacts of these issues and we have activated contingency plans to continue operations,” they added.
A source at the Paris Olympic Games organising committee said the problem is affecting the accreditation system with some people unable to pick up badges before next Friday’s ceremony on the River Seine.
The source added it could also affect arrival of athletes who have had flights cancelled, after the athletes’ Olympic village welcomed its first guests on Thursday.
Microsoft taking ‘mitigation actions’ after service issues
US tech giant Microsoft said it was taking “mitigation actions” after service disruptions.
“Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions,” the company said in a post on social media platform X.
In a notice titled “Service Degradation”, Microsoft said users “may be unable to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services”.
Microsoft said access was limited as some users were only able to access Microsoft 365 in read-only mode while it works to fix the problem.
“We remain committed in treating this event with the highest priority and urgency while we continue to address the lingering impact for the remaining Microsoft 365 apps that are in a degraded state,” it said.
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