Windows system goes blue; hits banks, airports, and emergency services worldwide

A major outage affecting Windows-based systems has led to widespread disruptions across various sectors, including emergency services, financial institutions, and airports worldwide.

The incident has triggered significant operational challenges and continues to unfold.

Reports indicate that numerous Windows systems are failing to boot, with preliminary speculation pointing towards a software issue linked to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

In Australia, the New South Wales Police Force acknowledged a system outage on social media. Sydney Airport, one of Australia's largest and busiest transportation hubs, continued to experience problems just as the weekend was beginning for many.

This glitch is causing significant turmoil, including:

- Grounded flights at international airports

- Online banking services becoming inaccessible

- Broadcasting networks forced off the air

The Down Detector platform has highlighted a surge in service disruptions involving major entities such as Microsoft, Visa, and Ryanair, among others.

Vistara tweets, "We are experiencing technical challenges across various aspects of our operations due to a global outage at our service provider's end. We are working with them to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."

The outage appears to be global in scope, affecting regions including the U.S., India, Japan, and the U.K. In the U.K., attempts to access banking services have failed, and multiple flights have been grounded. U.S. emergency services are also experiencing disruptions, with reports indicating that systems used in critical situations, such as ambulances, are down.

"We're still observing a positive trend in service availability while we continue to redirect the impacted traffic. We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the issue. Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions. Multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress. More details can be found within the admin center under MO821132," wrote Microsoft on X (formerly Twitter).

A comment on Hacker News highlighted the gravity of the situation, noting, “Our emergency department has been knocked offline, which is alarming given the current medical emergencies.”

Additionally, train services in the U.K. are facing interruptions. Southern Railway has reported severe IT issues affecting their network, leading to potential last-minute cancellations, especially on Thameslink and Great Northern routes.

Sky News in the U.K. is currently off the air due to this outage.

As of now, the cause of the outage remains unclear.

Unverified sources suggest that CrowdStrike’s support team has identified the issue as being related to a recent software update and is in the process of rolling back the update to address the problem.