Cyber outage disrupts global services, crashes Windows PCs

A global tech outage hit services and companies in multiple industries around the world on Friday, including in banking, travel and broadcasting in Spain, Turkey and Australia.

Global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike told NBC News that the outage is related to an issue in the most recent update, which is now being rolled back. The problem crashed Windows machines and servers, sending them into a loop of recovery so that they couldn’t restart.

Earlier on Friday, the company told users, “CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor.” Companies install the Falcon product on computers for security monitoring.

Major airlines in the U.S., including Delta, United and American Airlines grounded all flights Friday due to a communication issue, said the Federal Aviation Administration.

In Australia, the outage affected banks, telecom companies and media including the Australia Broadcasting Corporation.

“Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies, ” the office of Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.

“There is no information to suggest it is a cyber security incident. We continue to engage across key stakeholders.”

Train services were disrupted in the U.K. Southern Railway posted on X that it was experiencing “widespread IT issues across our entire network.” 

Spain reported a “computer incident” at all its airports, while Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions which it said would affect “all airlines operating across the Network.” 

The CBC was also impacted by the outage.