In July 2024, a global computer blackout occurred, affecting major institutions around the world. Some major banks, airlines, healthcare services and media outlets were affected by a bug in the Windows operating system. Here are the key details:
Origin of the problem:
The flaw was associated with an antivirus update from the American cybersecurity company Crowdstrike.
Crowdstrike CEO George Kurz stated that they had identified the “defect” and implemented a fix.
Microsoft also claimed that the “underlying cause” had been fixed for its apps.
Impact on Different Sectors:
Banks: There were widespread outages in online banking due to Microsoft systems going down.
Airlines: Thousands of flights have been canceled around the world. Airlines including United, Delta and American Airlines issued a “global grounding” order.
Health Services: Hospitals and health systems experienced difficulties due to the inoperability of electronic terminals.
Media: The Sky satellite network was taken off the air in Australia.
Magnitude of the Blackout:
The British Institute of Engineering and Technology said the scale of this disruption was unprecedented and likely to go down in history.
In 2017, an incident of a similar scale had been recorded, but this one exceeded all expectations.
In short, the Microsoft systems outage had a significant impact on global infrastructure, causing confusion and chaos at airports, banks, and other services. Currently the Windows operating system has been restored; Crowdstrike has fixed the issue and they say they will be inspecting their software. but even so it has not been possible to avoid its fall in the stock market.
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