Most major U.S. airline operators have grounded all flights this Friday morning, as a wave of global IT disruption saw systems in a wide range of industries go down.
The problems are linked to a botched Microsoft Windows update and its interactions with a simultaneous update from an important cybersecurity firm called Crowdstrike. It appears that the Crowdstrike update is leaving computer systems installed with it stuck in a “Blue Screen of Death” and unable to boot. There is no suggestion at this time that the problems are because of a cyberattack.
American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Air canceled all flights that weren’t already in the air as of early Friday morning.
Early reports suggest some Las Vegas casinos are also experiencing problems, with Green Valley Ranch Resort in the suburb of Henderson seeing outages on all of its slots from Thursday night. Guests reported attendants hand-paying the remaining balance each player had on the machines, with some waiting hours to get their cash returned.
Star Casino Australia, Sydney’s biggest casino, experienced a complete slots outage over the weekend, which may or may not be related. In the UK, bookmaker Ladbrokes’ online casino and sportsbook is down, the operator confirmed this morning.
Outside of gambling, the outages have affected flights and airports all over the world, as well as shops, banks, trading floors, TV stations, public transit systems, hospitals, and web service platforms.
The Problem
Microsoft first reported some outages on Thursday night. It said most of the problems were fixed on Friday morning.
Nevertheless, reports continued to roll in of more outages from around the world. Less than an hour after Microsoft said most of the issues were over, five major U.S. airlines announced they were grounding their flights.
Most of these companies have named Crowdstrike, an Austin, Texas, cybersecurity company, as the source of their problems. Its interactions with the recently updated Microsoft Windows (which had its own problems over this period) caused blue screen errors on thousands of commercial computers.
“In terms of technical details, the update causes a BSOD loop on any Windows machine, essentially making it boot and crash on an infinite loop. Making it worse is the fact that there are a significant number of Windows machines that the update was auto-installed on overnight,” said Ilkka Turunen of software company Sonatype, speaking to The Guardian.
“There are workarounds that customers of theirs will apply, but it seems to be very manual.”
The Prognosis
Depending on how long these outages last, the problem could be a quickly forgotten inconvenience or an economic disaster.
In 2023, a 10-day systems outage from a cyberattack at MGM Resorts International’s casino hotels caused $100 million in lost revenue for the operator.
It remains to be seen if this latest outage will hit any gambling businesses on the scale of the MGM cyberattack. But at this stage, anything is possible. Some companies have reportedly begun to get back to operation already. But disruption looks likely to continue for global infrastructure for at least the rest of Friday.
Experts are already calling for this incident to be a wake-up call for increased resilience and risk spread among critical infrastructure providers.
“This sudden, severe disruption halts everyday activities and starkly exposes the fragility of our heavily digitized world. From banking to health care, education to government, no sector remains untouched, highlighting an urgent need for a worldwide strategic overhaul of our critical infrastructures,” said Shumi Akhtar, associate professor of business at the University of Sydney.
“This crisis calls for immediate collaborative action to enhance resilience through robust safeguards and fail-safes, especially in life-critical networks.”
David is an online casino expert who specializes in online slots and boasts over 10 years experience writing about iGaming. He has written for a wide range of notable publications, including eSports Insider and WordPlay Magazine.
David graduated Derby University with a BA Degree in English Literature and Creative Writing.
