The logo for CrowdStrike and a Spirit Airlines webpage are shown on a computer screen and mobile phone screen, in New York, Friday, July 19, 2024. AP Photo/Richard Drew
“This is not a cyberattack,” Mayor Eric Adams said Friday morning at an all-hands City Hall press conference in response to the worldwide tech meltdown that snarled airports, disrupted health care and financial services and affected computer systems for countless businesses, starting at roughly 12:45 a.m. Friday.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue started when it deployed a faulty software update to computers running Microsoft Windows, causing systems to flash the “Blue Screen of Death.” Fixing the issue requires a manual update to each of the tens of thousands of affected computers around the world.
Adams and agency heads assured New York City residents that essential services including 911, 311, FDNY, EMS, NYPD, radio and dispatch services remained in operation, along with subways and hospitals, water systems and traffic lights.
“No calls are being held or missed and there’s no backlog at FDNY,” Adams told reporters. “Our infrastructure and emergency operations have not been impacted, they are all in place and we are going to continue to do that. Life-saving complaints that come through [911] or city agencies are being prioritized.”
The Summer Rising school program, including bus service, were unaffected, “Although we’re going to tell parents you may see disruption on the bus tracking app,” Adams said.
Other city services, including bill paying, may be impacted. FDNY and NYPD may have temporary processing issues — and there may be camera issues, officials said.
Adams warned that the NYC Office of Technology expected to see “cascading effects of the outage throughout the day” and would be working to minimize the disruptions and restore affected services as soon as possible.
Across the country, unexpected disruptions could be seen. Even some of the billboards in Times Square went dark, AP reported. The Social Security Administration closed its field offices across the country, according to Federal News Network, with no word on when they will reopen. The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a statement on its website saying, “The SEC is aware of the situation related to a widespread IT disruption and is monitoring for market-related impacts.”
While NYC’s 911 system remained functional, the Federal Communications Commission said on X it was aware that some 911 services elsewhere have been disrupted.
The Biden administration is racing to assess the fallout from the massive outage, Politico reports.
Statewide disruptions
Gov. Kathy Hochul said private businesses across the state and within state government that rely on CrowdStrike had been affected, and multiple counties had notified the state Office of Emergency Management that their internal computer systems were impacted.
“Thankfully, all of them have backup systems for situations like this,” she said in a release. “New Yorkers in all 62 counties are able to call 911 at this time.”
In addition, major disruptions have been reported at Department of Motor Vehicles offices across the state, she said.
Recovery involves a manual process
Chief Technology Officer Matt Fraser said a number of city workstations were impacted between 12 and 1:30 a.m. Friday. After notifying CrowdStrike, the city stopped employing the faulty software patch around 1:30 a.m. “Now we are going through recovery,” he said. “Unfortunately, recovery at this moment is a fairly manual process that requires a human touch, and we have a team of people working across the city to get things back up and running as soon as possible.”
The city recently held drills to practice responding to this type of incident, he said. “Today is a good example of how planning in advance has helped protect the city in a continuity of our services.”
Transit running on time, but big delays at airports
MTA head Janno Lieber said that buses, trains and commuter railroads were running as scheduled. “The impacts are limited so far to customer-facing,” he said, citing a problem with the countdown clocks in the B division, which is the “letter” trains. “The trains are coming on their regular schedules and you can count on it. You just may not have the countdown clock,” Lieber said. “Otherwise, the tolls are being collected — bad news for some people.“
Tens of thousands of flights at airports around the world were disrupted, however, including at LaGuardia and Newark airports, and to a lesser extent JFK. According to the FlightAware website, inbound flight delays averaged almost two hours at LaGuardia and Newark just before noon, with 13% of flights canceled at LaGuardia and 8% at Newark. At JFK, 4% of flights were canceled. CNN reported 2,375 cancelled flights in the U.S. Friday.
Hospitals remain functional
Dr. Mitch Katz, president and CEO of New York City Health + Hospitals, said that not only all city hospitals but all the hospitals across New York City were functional. “Every hospital is required to have a plan and to practice what would happen if the computer systems went down because we deal with life and death and have to make instant decisions about prescribing medicine and running a test, and so every hospital has to be able to run without computers.”
The electronic health records system Epic used by New York hospitals did not go down, Katz said, though patients may experience some delays because some individual locations may have to be brought back up manually.
According to AP, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan said it was pausing the start of any procedures that require anesthesia due to the technology disruption.
The tech meltdown caused numerous and unexpected knock-on effects across the country, including health care and local government snafus. The Maricopa County Elections Department in Arizona posted on X that some of its statewide primary voting locations were affected. Downdetector recorded a big spike in complaints about Amazon and Target outages.
On its website Friday, CrowdStrike apologized for one of the biggest cyber failures in history.
“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on,” the company said.
