A global cyber outage forced airports across the world to ground flights on Friday, citing communications issues. Airlines, railroads, media companies, banks, and telecom firms reported system outages that disrupted operations, Reuters says.
American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Air in the US grounded flights. Airports in Spain and Berlin faced similar problems and grounded flights as well. Media companies such as ABC in Australia were unable to conduct business.
The cyber outage is due to problems faced by certain Microsoft systems, and there have also been Crowdstrike issues.
As Skynews reports: “The crash is believed to be related to a problem at software company Microsoft and global cyber security company Crowdstrike—although it is unknown if it is the same problem affecting airports and rail services around the world.”
Microsoft said it continues to deal with the “lingering impact” of 365 apps and services that are in a “degraded state,” while Crowdstrike confirmed in an automated message that it is aware of reports of crashes.
Crowdstrike on Friday responded with a recorded message when Reuters contacted its technical support. The message said that it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to its Falcon sensor.
Without no confirmation as of yet, however, a British government source told Reuters that the problem is not being treated as a hacker attack but, rather, as a cyber-related security issue.
According to Reuters, there is no information to suggest the outage was a cyber security incident.
No cyber outage at Athens International Airport
The Athens International Airport (AIA) has not reported any cyber outage issues. Air traffic and passenger service are progressing without problems. This is despite the operational problems that other major airports face.
An AIA communication executive spoke to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency saying that only a few airlines have experienced operational problems caused by the global cyber outage. Nonetheless, they overcame the problems by using more traditional methods such as manual check-in and boarding cards. There were no flight delays caused by the outage.
The outage had a ripple effect, with Spain reporting a “computer incident” at all airports, while Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned of potential disruptions. It said those would affect “all airlines operating across the Network,” though it did not specify the nature of the disruptions.
AWS cloud service provider said in a statement that it was “investigating reports of connectivity issues to Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS.”
It was not immediately clear whether all reported outages were linked to Crowdstrike problems or IF there were other issues at play.
This is a developing story.