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Boston Brand Media discovered the trending issue as businesses worldwide faced a major IT outage on Friday, disrupting financial services, doctors’ offices, and TV broadcasters. Air travel was particularly affected, with grounded planes, delayed services, and airports advising passengers. The disruption was traced back to a significant issue with a recent tech update from cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz stated that the company is “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” clarifying that Mac and Linux hosts were not affected. He emphasized that this was not a security incident or cyberattack and that the issue had been identified, isolated, and fixed.
An expert suggested this might be the “largest IT outage in history.” Meanwhile, Microsoft announced that its cloud services were restored after an outage, although many users continued to report issues. Shares of CrowdStrike fell by 11% following the incident.
FTC Chair Lina Khan commented on the ongoing CrowdStrike outage in a series of posts on X on Friday. Without directly mentioning CrowdStrike or Microsoft, she suggested that concentrated market power leads to "fragile systems." Khan wrote, "Concentrating production can concentrate risk, so that a single natural disaster or disruption has cascading effects." While she did not announce an FTC investigation into the incident, she referenced past actions, such as probing cloud computing companies and seeking public comment on tech companies frequently acquiring smaller competitors.
Some Amazon warehouses in the U.S. faced disruptions caused by the global IT outage. Three warehouse staffers reported that the outage affected the A to Z app, used by employees to manage schedules and submit time-off requests, though it has since been restored in some areas. The employees requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The outage also impacted the "Anytime Pay" service, preventing employees from accessing their earnings before the next paycheck. A notice on Amazon's internal payroll site stated, "Anytime Pay is unavailable due to a global outage impacting users to access internal IT services."
At some locations, operations were temporarily halted. An anonymous Amazon warehouse worker in South Carolina mentioned that their site passed the time by doing karaoke for "cola cash," credits for snacks and drinks at the facility.
Amazon's trucking operations were also affected. Truck drivers using Relay, a platform for booking jobs to move Amazon cargo, experienced brief issues picking up loads due to system problems. "Everything was bluescreened," said Dwight Evitt, a truck driver in San Marcos, Texas. Amazon representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz issued an apology in a blog post for the global outage on Friday, emphasizing that the company is diligently working with affected customers and partners to restore all systems. He urged customers to "remain vigilant" and engage only with official CrowdStrike representatives for support, warning that adversaries might exploit such events.
Kurtz stated that the company’s blog and technical support portal would be the primary channels for updates. He clarified that the outage resulted from a defect in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts, with Mac and Linux hosts unaffected, and reassured that it was not due to a security breach or cyberattack.
“As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again,” Kurtz wrote.
For questions or comments write to writers@bostonbrandmedia.com
Source: CNBC
