CrowdStrike Says ‘Significant Number’ Of Systems Back Online

Disruption from Friday’s Microsoft Windows outage could continue for weeks to come, organisations have warned, as flight chaos and healthcare booking backlogues continued.

CrowdStrike, the computer security company whose faulty software update triggered the outage, said in a Monday statement that a “significant number” of affected devices were now back online.

The company said it “continues to focus on restoring all systems” and warned of hackers distributing malware that poses as a quick fix.

Many of the roughly 8.5 million systems affected by the update will need to be manually brought back online, a process that is slow and cumbersome, at a moment when many staff are on holiday.

Flight snarls

“We understand the profound impact this has had on everyone. We know our customers, partners and their IT teams are working tirelessly and we’re profoundly grateful,” the company said.

“We apologise for the disruption this has created.”

Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike said it was deploying a new fix that it believed would speed up recovery.

Airlines, banks, hospitals and other businesses were all affected by the snarl.

Delta Air Lines, the worst affected by the outage, had cancelled more than 600 flights by 7 a.m. ET (3 p.m. BST), according to flight tracker FlightAware.

More than 7,000 flights in or out of the US were cancelled from Friday to Sunday, with about half of those being Delta flights.

About 1,400 flights were cancelled on Sunday alone.

‘Working around the clock’

“Our teams have been working around the clock to recover and restore full functionality,” said Delta chief executive Ed Bastian.

He said in a message to customers on Sunday that the disruption came during the airline’s busiest travel weekend of the summer. Flights were more than 90 percent full, making it difficult to find space to rebook travellers, he said.

Healthcare services in the UK, Israel and Germany were disrupted on Friday, with booking and patient records systems affected.

“Though we have some return of functionality to our computer systems, we anticipate that there will be ongoing disruption to patient care for the weeks to come,” said Wilmslow Health Centre in a statement on X.

China and Russia were relatively unaffected by the outage, as CrowdStrike software is relatively little used in either country.