A massive Microsoft outage unleashed havoc on computer systems across the world, grounding flights and crippling banks, stock exchanges, payment systems and emergency services. Microsoft, in a tweet approximately six hours after the outage was first reported, said “multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress”.
What Caused Global Microsoft Outage
Why In News
- A massive Microsoft outage unleashed havoc on computer systems across the world, grounding flights and crippling banks, stock exchanges, payment systems and emergency services.
- Microsoft, in a tweet approximately six hours after the outage was first reported, said “multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress”.
Situation
- Workers around the world were also unable to log onto the computers on morning with Windows machines displaying a “blue screen error”. “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We’re just collecting some error info, and then we’ll restart for you,” the message read.
- The most visibly impacted by the outage was the aviation industry, with airlines and airports from Europe to Asia to the Americas seeing major disruption in services. Flights were grounded in many countries.
- In India, airlines such as Indigo, Akasa Air, Air India Express, and Spicejet announced that they were facing technical glitches impacting services like booking tickets and web check-in.
- Akasa Air, for instance, announced that its online services would be temporarily unavailable. “Currently we are following manual check-in and boarding processes at the airports and hence request passengers with immediate travel plans to reach the airport early to check-in at our counters,” it posted on X.
- Operations of stock exchanges in various countries were disrupted by the outage. Services at the London Stock Exchange were affected. Several brokerage firms also faced technical outages, including Nuvama, Edelweiss, and Motilal Oswal. Traders reported disruptions in their operations in India.
What Caused The Outage
- Based on what Microsoft has revealed, the outage which prevented users from accessing several Microsoft 365 apps was due to a ‘Configuration change’. The outage is due to the failure of CrowdStrike Falcon, a cybersecurity platform that provides security solutions for Microsoft Windows.
- The reports claim that a software update from the company went wrong, and was blocking Windows devices, essentially prompting the “blue screen of death” on PCs.
- “The outage was caused by a fault in the “Falcon sensor” used by US-based cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike. The sensor is installed on many business computers to gather security data. The fault had a major impact on Microsoft systems worldwide. Major Chinese airlines such as Hainan Airlines, Air China, China Southern Airlines, and Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK) have revealed that they didn’t face any obstacles due to the global IT glitch as they use different systems.
Operating Systems Developed In India
- BharOS : Formerly known as IndOS, this closed-source mobile operating system was developed by IIT Madras and JandK Operations Private Limited for use in government and public systems. It’s based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and includes security features like proof of trust and chain of trust. BharOS also doesn’t come with Google services or apps. It was launched in January 2023 and is available in 10 native languages.
- Maya OS : Developed by the Indian government’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), and the National Informatics Centre (NIC), this open-source operating system is based on Ubuntu. It’s designed to be more secure and reliable than Windows or macOS and is well-suited for defense applications.
- Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS GNU/Linux) : This Linux distribution is based on Debian and is developed by C-DAC/NRCFOSS. The latest stable version, “Pragya”, was released in March 2024. The server variant of BOSS GNU/Linux supports Intel and AMD architectures.
