Microsoft IT outages live: Dozens more flights canceled across UK as CrowdStrike gives ‘automatic fix’ update

Cyber ​​security experts said the outage was “unprecedented” in its reach, affecting many of the world’s biggest companies.

The cause of the problems was initially mysterious: Windows computers showed a blue screen of death, or BSOD, as if they had just spontaneously stopped working.

Airline passengers are enduring a third day of chaos, with dozens more holiday flights canceled.

After hundreds of flights were grounded by the IT outage on Friday, knock-on delays have continued through the weekend, with adverse weather in parts of Europe and air-traffic control delays exacerbating the problems.

At London Gatwick, easyJet has so far canceled 24 flights, including to holiday departures to Faro, Naples and Palma de Mallorca.

Britain’s biggest budget airline has also grounded a Manchester-Bordeaux trip, with other cancellations from Manchester on Eurowings to Dusseldorf and Hamburg.

London Heathrow passengers are also hard hit, with British Airways canceling a dozen flights to and from UK and Continental European destinations – as well as a London City-Faro round trip.

Aer Lingus has grounded a flight between Shannon in the west of Ireland and Heathrow, with Eurowings canceling a flight from Cologne.

Ryanair has made one round-trip cancellation from its main base, London Stansted: to Milan Bergamo.

Before this week, CrowdStrike was known for finding the cause of problems, rather than causing them. The company – headquartered in Austin, Texas, but with a reach across the world – was most famous for having investigated large-scale hacks, such as those on Sony Pictures and breaches at the Democratic National Committee that it blamed on Russian spies.

It has built a huge business out of that and other work. It was worth $80bn (£62bn) when trading on the Nasdaq closed on Thursday – though its share price has since fallen by 20 per cent. It reported revenues of $3bn in the last year.

CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 – by a team that included George Kurtz, the CEO that has been representing the company as it recovers from the problems – and immediately caught the interest of investors. The year after, it launched with a $26m investment round, and it has gathered more investment since.

Our Technology editor Andrew Griffin reports:

NHS England has warned of “continued disruption” to GP services into next week from the global IT outage.

Across England, GP surgeries reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records on Friday as their EMIS appointment and patient record system went down.

NHS England said on Saturday afternoon that its systems were “coming back online in most areas” but “still running slightly slower than usual”.

An NHS spokesperson said: “As practices recover from the loss of IT systems on Friday, there may be some continued disruption, particularly to GP services, in some areas into next week as practices work to rebook appointments.

“The advice for Monday remains that patients should attend appointments as normal unless told otherwise.”

Dr Fari Ahmad said the IT outage meant “everything went down” in her surgery and the disruption would cause “a lot more issues later on in the week”.

The GP told BBC Breakfast: “We had people who were supposed to come in for results, and we couldn’t see them. We said ‘Sorry, we can’t help you’. We were just trying to deal with the emergencies on the day that really couldn’t wait. We couldn’t do our routine stuff, so the implications for us are a lot of that’s been bumped up.”

Australia’s cyber intelligence agency has warned “malicious websites and unofficial code” are being released online claiming to aid recovery from Friday’s global digital outage.

Australia was one of many countries affected by the outage, which hit media, retailers, banks and airlines, causing havoc worldwide after a botched software update from CrowdStrike.

On Saturday, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) – the country’s cyber intelligence agency – said “a number of malicious websites and unofficial code are being released claiming to help entities recover from the widespread outages caused by the CrowdStrike technical incident”.

On its website, the agency said its cyber security center “strongly encourages all consumers to source their technical information and updates from official CrowdStrike sources only”.

Cyber ​​Security Minister Clare O’Neil said on social media platform X on Saturday that Australians should “be on the lookout for possible scams and phishing attempts”.

Friday’s outage hit Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the country’s largest bank, which said some customers were unable to make PayID payments, an issue later resolved. National airline Qantas and Sydney airport said planes were delayed but still flying.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said late on Friday that there had been government no impact to critical infrastructure, services or emergency phone systems.

The Australian home affairs minister has revealed Crowdstrike is “now close to rolling out an automatic fix to the issue with their update”.

Clare O’Neil said the company at the center of the world’s biggest-ever IT outage has told the federal government that it is not far off the fix that would enable systems to return online.

Writing on the social media platform This should increase the speed at which systems across the economy are back online.”

A global IT outage hit one-third of drug deliveries to pharmacies in England as chaos impacted thousands of GP practices and hospitals across the country declared critical incidents.

GPs, pharmacies and NHS 111 services across the country suffered major disruption on Friday after an update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company crashed Microsoft Windows systems.

The IT bug hit EMIS which is used by around 60 per cent of GP practices – 3,700- to access patient records, book appointments and issue prescriptions.

A widespread IT outage affecting sectors from the NHS to transport and banking to media has been described as an unprecedented sign of how exposed services are with a potential overreliance on certain operating systems.

The major disruption could prompt a rethink on whether the most resilient operating systems are being used and whether it is “lazy” to stick with what we know, according to cybersecurity expert Dr Harjinder Lallie.

The associate professor at the University of Warwick described the situation as an IT “catastrophe”.