How Blue Screen of Death wreaked havoc in 12 hours of Microsoft outage (2024)

New Delhi,UPDATED: Jul 19, 2024 17:06 IST

At 6 pm on Friday on the East Coast in the US, it seemed the world had come to a stop. Airlines, emergency services and media houses saw a blank screen on their IT systems across the US. News broadcasts got halted, airlines such as American, United and Delta even had to ground their flights. The Blue Screen of Death had struck.

Users took to the subreddit of cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, and reported the glitches. Soon, people from various corners of the world, including the US, Australia and India, revealed that they were facing the same issue -- the Blue Screen of Death.

The outage of Microsoft operating system hit various sectors in the US, leaving essential services hindered for at least 12 hours.

MICROSOFT OUTAGE, FROM US TO THE WORLD

The outage on Friday spread from the US to Asia after Microsoft Corp reported an outage across its online services.

The London Stock Exchange, fast food giant McDonald's, United Airlines and the LSE Group were some of the big companies to report issues with their communications and customer service.

Growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security, Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta were reported on DownDectector, a user-reported internet outages tracking portal.

Microsoft acknowledged the issue and said they are, “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate the impact in a more expedient fashion” and they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

People across the US started seeing the Blue Screen of Death, a stop-error or stop-screen by Microsoft. It is a critical system error on Windows operating systems that indicates that the system is facing a severe issue and needs to be fixed on an urgent basis.

The Microsoft outage was caused by a glitch in the “Falcon sensor” used by US-based cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike, which was getting updated, according to reports.

EMERGENCY FOR 911 NOW IN THE US

It was an emergency like none before. The go-to American emergency service 911 was also not spared by the Microsoft outage. It was disrupted in many parts of the US and non-emergency call centres are also not working due to the outage.

At least four states reportedly experienced a loss of phone access to emergency services, causing 911 calls to stop working, reported New York City-based Newsweek.

Even the police and ambulance providers are dispatching cars manually, reported the Arizona Republic. A dispatcher for ambulance company American Medical Response discussed with the Arizona Republic how his company's system was shut down.

But the 911 issue has been resolved in some areas, reported Reuters.

The outage caused problems in hospitals as well.

MEDICAL RECORDS AT CALIFORNIA, NEW YORK HOSPITALS INACCESSIBLE

White Plains (NY)-based doctor, Tamara Sharf took to X to express her concerns, and that the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) was down at major hospitals in the were of New York and California.

"Rumour has it EMR is down at major hospitals in NY and CA. We are locked out of Cerner (health service platform) here, and I heard from a friend in LA that Epic is down at their hospital. 911 outage here too apparently," posted Dr Tamara Sharf.

"Is it really that widespread? What are folks experiencing?," added Sharf.

An incident number was lost by the police system in the Phoenix police department due to the outage, reported the Arizona Republic.

Clerks were accepting only cash and service terminals were also not working.

OUTAGE HITS THE AIRLINES, HALTS FLIGHTS

Several low-cost carriers such as Frontier Airlines, Allegiant, and SunCountry said outages affected their operations. Even American Airlines operations were hit.

Frontier Airlines was among the first to experience problems, with the "major Microsoft technical outage" temporarily halting its operations, reported Reuters.

Allegiant's website became unavailable due to the Microsoft Azure issue, while SunCountry's booking and check-in facilities were affected by a third-party vendor.

After hours, American Airlines resumed its operations.

MEDIA HOUSES HIT, ABC REPORTS BLACK SCREENS

Media organisations, including ABC, were impacted by the outage, with reports of network issues linked to Microsoft systems. Sometimes they reboot, sometimes they don't.

"We are trying to figure out what is going on as we are dealing with a pretty major computer outage as of now," said journalist Mike Rogers, pointing at his black computer screen in his office.

"It's a global outage, including ours. All of our computers have gone down. It has been a systematic thing that has been going on for a last couple of hours," reported CBC news.

"We're obviously not on air. We're trying SkyNews breakfast," Sky News Sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao, cheekily posted on X, along with a photo of her sipping coffee.

Truly, a lot can change in minutes, but this was hours of havoc. The Microsoft outage impacted emergency services, airlines and media houses across the US. American Airlines has resumed operations. Slowly, things are returning to normal.