Is your Windows machine giving you the blue screen of death (BSOD) this morning?
One faulty update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is seemingly to blame, bringing down Windows PCs and servers across the globe.
That has forced users into a recovery boot loop, with machines unable to start properly.
However, this is not affecting rogue users. Instead, global businesses, including banks, supermarkets, and transport providers, have reached a standstill.
Take the aviation industry as an example, with Delta, KLM, and Ryanair among the affected brands. IndiGo, a prominent Indian airline, has even taken to handwritten boarding passes.
The Microsoft / CrowdStrike outage has taken down most airports in India. I got my first hand-written boarding pass today pic.twitter.com/xsdnq1Pgjr
— Akshay Kothari (@akothari) July 19, 2024
Meanwhile, television broadcasters have been brought offline - with Sky News taken down for hours this morning – while retailers have resorted to cash payments only.
However, most concerningly, some global healthcare organizations – like the NHS - and emergency call centers have been impacted.
For its part, Crowdstrike confirmed the widespread reports of BSODs across Windows hosts at 06:20 BST and soon isolated the issue before reverting its update.
While that may have solved the problem for some, it didn’t have a bearing on machines already stuck in the recovery boot loop.
Indeed, for many IT admins across the digital world, it promises to be a difficult end to the working week, with hundreds resorting to Reddit to share possible workarounds: the ever-reliable last resort.
Update from the CrowdStrike CEO
After hours of radio silence across social media, CrowdStrike has reposted an update from its CEO & Founder, George Kurtz, on X.
