Millions of PCs across the globe have been hit by a blue screen of death with the issue causing TV stations to go off air and planes grounded.
A mass IT outage has sent millions of Windows PCs into meltdown with many currently showing the dreaded blue screen of death. The issue has been caused by an update issued from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike with the bug not only causing consumers major problems but also huge organisations such as airlines, TV stations and banks.
The gremlins began earlier this morning and have already caused flights to be delayed, trains to be cancelled and even Sky News to be taken off air.
Ryanair has confirmed that it has been hit by the “third-party” IT issues which is affecting its service. Supermarkets, banks and businesses have also been impacted with hundreds of IT administrators taking to Reddit forums to say they are working around the clock to try and minimise the impact.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Microsoft said “Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions. We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the issue. We’re working on rerouting impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion.”
Experts are now predicting that this bug will likely form the largest IT outage in history. Taking to X, Australian web security consultant Troy Hunt said: “I don’t think it’s too early to call it: this will be the largest IT outage in history.”
What is CrowdStrike?
CrowdStrike is a US-based global cybersecurity leader with an advanced cloud-native platform for protecting endpoints, cloud workloads, identities and data.
The firm’s primary aim is to protect global companies and block cyber threats such as data breaches, hacks and ransomware.
It’s a major organisation with customers including global investment banks.
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