The 'IT outage' caused by a conflict between the security program distributed by the American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike and Microsoft's Windows operating system (OS) has led to significant damage across major industries and service sectors.
According to foreign media such as AP, Reuters, and AFP on the 20th, the incident began on the 18th at 7 PM Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
In the early hours of the 19th, the large billboards in Times Square, a landmark in Manhattan, New York, began to display blue screens one by one before turning off, signaling the spread of the 'IT paralysis'. The damage was widespread, affecting both nations and companies.
The aviation sector was thrown into chaos. According to the aviation analysis company Cirium, out of over 110,000 scheduled commercial flights worldwide on the 19th, around 5,000 were canceled, and the number of canceled flights is expected to continue rising.
FlightAware, a flight tracking website, reported that Delta Airlines was the most affected by the IT outage, canceling 20% of its flights.
With online ticketing and check-in systems down, major airports around the world, including those in the US, Singapore, Germany, and the Netherlands, are issuing handwritten boarding passes. The manual processing is causing cascading delays in flight operations.
Airports and airlines, that had to halt flights or cancel services due to communication disruptions between aircraft and ground control centers and system outages, are gradually resuming operations. However, disruptions to air travel are expected to continue for some time.
Financial institutions also suffered. Employees of JP Morgan Chase, Nomura Holdings, and Bank of America were temporarily unable to log into their company systems. The trading system of Haitong Securities was down for three hours. JP Morgan Chase's ATMs also experienced issues but reportedly returned to normal operation by night. The Regulatory News Service (RNS) of the London Stock Exchange temporarily ceased operations, and Australia's largest bank, Commonwealth Bank, faced problems with its transfer services.
In the medical sector, emergency services were disrupted. In some parts of the United States, 911 emergency services were down, and hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital restricted non-emergency patient visits. Some blood donation centers had to activate emergency road delivery systems due to delayed flights preventing timely blood shipments. In the UK, doctors were unable to access patient records due to the National Health Service (NHS) system outage, and scheduled surgeries were canceled in countries like the Netherlands and Germany.
Logistics and automotive companies were also affected. Global shipping company Maersk reported that its terminals were down for several hours, and American railroad company Union Pacific experienced temporary disruptions. Renault had to temporarily halt operations at its factories in Maubeuge and Douai in northern France due to parts supply issues from suppliers.
Tesla's production lines were also halted. Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated on X (formerly Twitter) that the IT outage "caused a seizure in the car supply chain." India's largest automobile manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki, also temporarily stopped production and delivery.
Government and public sector entities using Microsoft's cloud services faced significant issues. Germany's Ministry of the Interior, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the New Zealand Parliament reported problems with their IT systems.
The direct cause of this global IT outage was an error during a security program update. The update of CrowdStrike's security program 'Falcon Sensor' clashed with Microsoft's Windows system. This conflict occurred on Microsoft's Azure cloud, which serves as the system server for various institutions and companies worldwide, amplifying the damage. IT experts predict that it may take several weeks for the situation to fully normalize.