After a significant outage that disrupted computer systems worldwide on Friday, Microsoft announced that it was taking “mitigation actions” in response to service issues.
If those were connected to the worldwide disruptions was unclear.
Microsoft stated in a statement on social media site X that “we are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions.”
Earlier, the disruption had caused aircraft in the US to be grounded, disrupted TV shows in the UK, and affected Australian telephones.
A comment from CrowdStrike could not be obtained right away.
Major US airlines, such as American Airlines, United, and Delta, grounded all of their flights on Friday due to a communication problem, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
A “technical problem” led to the suspension of flights at Berlin Brandenburg airport in Germany.
According to airport operator Aena, there were “disruptions” at all Spanish airports as a result of an IT failure that affected multiple businesses globally on Friday.
The airport in Hong Kong also reported that a few airlines had been impacted. In a statement, the airport’s authority connected the disturbance to a Microsoft outage.
Large lines were seen building at Sydney Airport in Australia, while the largest rail operator in the UK issued a warning about potential train disruptions owing to IT problems. These images were shared on social media.
A spokeswoman for Sydney Airport stated, “Flights are currently arriving and departing, however there may be some delays throughout the evening.”
“We have activated our contingency plans with our airline partners and deployed additional staff to our terminals to assist passengers.”
The “large-scale technical outage” was brought on by a problem with a “third-party software platform,” according to Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator, who also noted that there was currently no evidence indicating hacker involvement.
In the UK, Sky News reported that the issue had terminated its morning newscasts, while ABC, an Australian broadcaster, also reported a significant malfunction.
One of the biggest grocery chains in Australia had several of its self-checkout terminals broken and showing blue error messages.
The media in New Zealand reported that problems were being reported by banks and computer systems within the nation’s parliament.
The outages, according to Australian telecommunications operator Telstra, were brought on by “global issues” with Microsoft and CrowdStrike’s software.
Expert Toby Murray of the University of Melbourne stated that there were hints that the issue was related to a security programme known as Crowdstrike Falcon.
Murray stated, “CrowdStrike is a global cyber security and threat intelligence company.”
“Falcon is an endpoint detection and response platform; it monitors the computers it is installed on to identify and address intrusions, or hacks.”
Jill Slay, a cybersecurity expert at the University of South Australia, predicted that the outages would have a “enormous” worldwide impact.
