Massive Microsoft Windows Outage Bricks PCs, Halts Flights Worldwide

From PC Mag: Microsoft systems and Windows PCs around the world experienced a sudden outage early Friday morning when cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike released an update, causing computers to become stuck in the "blue screen of death" (BSoD).

Users reported issues with Microsoft, its store, and Microsoft 365 services beginning around 6:30 p.m. ET Thursday night, according to Downdetector.com data. Around 7:40 p.m. ET, Microsoft reported that its services were experiencing disruptions. The tech firm released hourly updates noting that it was rerouting traffic to working infrastructure and said that the issue continued to "see improvements" by 4 a.m. ET.

Microsoft's status page explains that its Azure cloud service was impacted. "We have been made aware of an issue impacting Virtual Machines running Windows Client and Windows Server, running the CrowdStrike Falcon agent, which may encounter a bug check (BSoD) and get stuck in a restarting state," the page states.

Some airlines were unable to operate as a result of the Windows issues, with reports that Southwest, Frontier, American Airlines, Delta, and United Airlines had inoperable computer systems and grounded flights due to the resulting communication issues. The BBC reports that approximately 1,400 flights have been cancelled as a result of the outage.

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