A global technological outage has disrupted work in several industries today, with airlines suspending flights, some television stations being taken off the air, and services from banking to health care affected by systemic problems.
While major US airlines - American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines grounded flights, other carriers and airports around the world reported delays and disruptions earlier today.
Banks and financial services companies from Australia to India and Germany have warned customers about the disruption.
In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, according to multiple reports from medical officials on the X network, while Sky News, one of the country's main broadcasters, was offline, apologizing for not being able to broadcast live.
The former head of Britain's National Cyber Security Center, Ciaran Martin, told BBC radio that a product update offered by global cyber security firm Crowdstrike appears to be affecting operating systems based on Microsoft's Windows operating system.
"We are aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to updates from a third-party software platform. We expect a solution," Microsoft said.
According to an alert Crowdstrike sent to clients, the company's "Falcon Sensor" software causes Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, informally known as the "blue screen of death."
The alert, which was sent, also contains a manual workaround.
More than half of Fortune 500 companies used Crowdstrike software, the US firm said in a promotional video this year.
Crowdstrike said it is actively working with customers affected by a defect found in a content update for Windows hosts.
"Mac and Linux hosts are not affected. This is not a security incident or cyber attack. The problem has been identified, isolated and a solution has been deployed. We are directing customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide full and ongoing updates on our website," it said. in the announcement of the CEO of "Crowdstrike" George Kurtz.
It is added that the "Crowdstrike" team is fully mobilized to ensure the safety and stability of clients.
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