CrowdStrike says global IT outages are not cyberattacks

A global internet outage hit airlines and businesses around the world on Friday, with the CEO of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike saying it was not a cyberattack.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers affected by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, said in a post on X. “Mac and Linux hosts are not affected.”

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” Kurtz added. “The issue was identified, isolated and a fix was deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide ongoing, thorough updates on our website.”

According to flight tracking website FlightAware, more than 18,000 flights have been delayed worldwide, with more than 1,200 in the US alone. Multiple Airlines noticed that they are experiencing problems with technology in Posts in X

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) he said in a post on X that “is closely monitoring a technical issue affecting US airline IT systems.”

“Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground calls until the issue is resolved,” the FAA added.

Air passengers in the US, Europe and Asia faced long queues, with carriers facing problems accessing check-in and reservation services.

Additionally, some media outlets in Australia were unable to return to air for hours, and banks in South Africa and New Zealand said they faced outages in payment systems, websites or apps.

“Authorities are aware of reports relating to a Microsoft outage that has caused disruption across the world,” said David Seymour, Acting Prime Minister of New Zealand. he said in a post on X. “We have not currently received any reports that indicate these issues are related to malicious cybersecurity activity.”

The Associated Press contributed.

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