Global Tech Outage Hits Airlines, Banks, Businesses

The New York Times reports:

Airports across the United States slowly descended into chaos early Friday after a worldwide tech outage disrupted flights and stranded passengers.

At least five airlines — Allegiant Air, American, Delta, Spirit and United — issued ground stops, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

“The F.A.A. is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines,” the agency said in a statement. “Several airlines have requested F.A.A. assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved.”

CNN Business reports:

The global computer outage affecting airports, banks and other businesses on Friday appears to stem at least partly from a software update issued by firm CrowdStrike, experts told CNN.

Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said that the IT issue causing a global outage has been identified and that a fix has been deployed. The company’s engineers took action to address the problem, according to the advisory, which told customers to reboot their computers and perform other actions if they were still having technical issues.

The issue is specific to Falcon, one of CrowdStrike’s main software products, and is not impacting Mac or Linux operating systems. CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software — used by numerous Fortune 500 companies — detects and blocks hacking threats..