The cybersecurity group is said to have caused a major failure during an update. CNBC received confirmation of the problem from CrowdStrike, which could hardly hide the situation as many machines running certain versions of Windows were left with the unfortunate blue screen, synonymous with a major system crash. The air transport, media, telecoms and banking sectors were in the front line. London Stock Exchange terminals were also clearly suffering this morning. In Spain, airports operated by Aena were forced to cease operations, while Eurowings (Lufthansa), Ryanair and Frontier experienced traffic disruptions. Broadcasters Comcast and Sky were out of service.
Thousands of PCs were affected by what is called a "BSOD" (blue screen of death).
-13% for CrowdStrike
"CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor," said the group, quoted by CNBC. Shares in the group, whose capitalization exceeds $83 billion, were down 13% in after-hours trading, below USD 300, against a close of USD 343 last night.
Microsoft, for its part, reports that efforts are underway to mitigate the impact. The group says it is "mobilized to manage this event with the highest priority and urgency, while continuing to address the lingering impact to remaining Microsoft 365 applications that are in a degraded state".
