The NHS, airports, airlines, train companies, banks and media outlets all experienced issues after their computer systems were knocked offline or left devices showing the so-called “Blue Screen of Death.”
The health service said the incident was “causing disruption in the majority of GP practices” in England however there was apparently no known impact on 999 or emergency services.
NHS England urged patients to attend appointments unless told otherwise and to only contact their GP if it is urgent.
One trust, the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust, however, did declare a critical incident “due to external IT issues.”
A statement on its website said that the outage had left it unable to deliver scheduled radiotherapy treatment and it had contacted patients who were due to have radiotherapy this morning to reschedule appointments.
An update later said the hospital was able to deliver radiotherapy services and the afternoon’s appointments would take place as scheduled.
EMIS Web is the most widely used clinical system for primary care in Britain and allows GPs to book appointments and examine records.
TV channel Sky News was also knocked off air, while Britain’s biggest train company warned passengers to expect disruption because of “widespread IT issues,” as did many major airlines and airports.The BBC’s children’s channel, CBBC, also appeared to be off air due to the outage. A message on the British channel read, “Sorry, something is wrong.”
Many businesses reported they were unable to take digital payments.
Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, Ryanair, also warned of issues with its booking system.
The Irish airline said on social media platform X: “We’re currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a Global 3rd party IT outage which is out of our control. We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours before their scheduled departure time.”
Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Edinburgh airports all reported delays and long queues, and some display boards showing the “Blue Screen Of Death” rather than passenger and flight information.
Microsoft has confirmed it was aware of and fixing issues with its cloud platform, Azure, affecting services and apps, with the company’s service health website warning of “service degradation.”
CrowdStrike Identifies Issue
It was later established that the outage was caused by a defect in a software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike for Windows users.The company’s CEO George Kurtz confirmed on X that CrowdStrike was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”
He went on to say that “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” and that the incident was “not a security incident or cyberattack.”
Mr. Kurtz added: “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organisations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”
Downdetector, a website that records reports of users struggling to access internet services, showed spikes in outages affecting Visa, Mastercard, Microsoft services, AWS, numerous banks, as well as several supermarkets and airlines across the globe.
