The CEO of CrowdStrike, the company at the center of the global IT outage, said he "deeply regrets" the incident but warned it would take "some time" for systems to be fully restored.
George Kurtz says a fix has been found for a bug in an update from the cybersecurity firm that affected Microsoft Windows PCs, knocking many PCs offline around the world, canceling flights and trains, and paralyzing some healthcare systems.
In an interview with NBC's Today Show, Kurtz said the incident was not a cyberattack, but admitted that despite CrowdStrike identifying the bug causing the problem and rolling out a fix, it would still take "some time" for all systems to return to normal.
"We are deeply sorry for the impact we have caused to customers, travelers and everyone affected," said Mr Kurtz.
"We've been working with our customers all night and working with them. Many of our customers are rebooting the system and now it's back up and running because we've fixed it on our end," he said.
"We're working with some systems that aren't recovering, so it may be a while before they automatically don't recover. But our mission is to make sure every customer fully recovers. We're not going to give up until we get every customer back to where they were. We're going to keep protecting them and keeping the bad guys out of their systems."
When asked if he ever thought an outage of this magnitude was possible, the CrowdStrike founder added: "Software is a very complex world with many interactions, and it's a challenge to always stay one step ahead of the adversary."
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been implemented. We...
-George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 19, 2024
Industry expert Adam Smith from BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, warned that it could take "weeks" before all computers and systems are fully restored.
"The fix will have to be deployed to many computers around the world. So if computers are getting blue screens and endless loops, it could be more difficult and take days and weeks," he said.
"Microsoft Windows is not the primary operating system for mission-critical systems, Linux is - so this could have been a lot worse."
CrowdStrike previously confirmed that Linux and Apple Mac systems were not affected by the bug.
The flawed update caused critical infrastructure to crash, computer systems to go offline and many devices to display the so-called "blue screen of death" as they became stuck in an endless cycle of attempting to reboot themselves, affecting key sectors across the country.
The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with a GP appointment and patient records system.
If you have an appointment, please come unless you have been told otherwise. If you need help, use 111 online or by phone, and in emergencies call 999.
➡️https://t.co/M4QxHP2GqM
- NHS England (@NHSEngland) July 19, 2024
The outage caused "disruption to most GP practices" in England, but there was no known impact on 999 or emergency services, NHS England said.
The health service said patients should attend their appointments unless otherwise instructed and should only contact their GP in emergencies.
Across England, GP practices reported being unable to make appointments or access patient records because their EMIS web system was down.
The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) said "community pharmacy services, including obtaining prescriptions from GPs and delivering medicines, have been disrupted today".
In an update on its website, Microsoft advises users of virtual machines (PCs where the computer is not in the same location as the display) to power cycle their devices up to 15 times to restart the device and resolve the issue.
"We have received customer feedback that multiple reboots may be required (as many as 15 have been reported), but the overall feedback is that reboots at this stage are an effective step to resolve issues," the tech giant said.
In the UK, Sky News was briefly taken off air on Friday morning and Britain's largest train operator warned passengers of disruption due to "widespread IT issues", as did many major airlines and airports.
Around the world, banks, supermarkets and other large institutions reported computer problems that disrupted services. In addition, many companies were unable to process digital payments or access key databases.
At airports, flights were cancelled and employees had to manually check in passengers on specific flights to reduce long queues.
And one of the affected airlines, Ryanair, urged passengers whose flights had been cancelled to leave the airport.
The airline said in a statement: "Regrettably, we have been forced to cancel a small number of flights today due to this global third-party IT outage.
"Affected passengers have been notified and are advised to log into their myRyanair account once systems are back online to review their options.
"A full list of cancellations is available on ryanair.com. If your flight has been cancelled, we kindly ask that you please leave the airport as the IT outage means we are currently unable to assist passengers at the airport.
"We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by this third-party global IT outage. We are doing everything we can to minimize disruption and keep passengers informed."
⚠️ We are currently experiencing widespread IT issues across our network. Our IT teams are actively investigating the root cause of the issue.
At certain locations we do not have access to driver diagrams, which may result in potential cancellations at short notice,...
- Thameslink (@TLRailUK) July 19, 2024
Earlier in the day, Govia Thameslink Railway, the parent company of Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern, warned passengers of delays.
According to Downdetector, a website that monitors service status, users are reporting problems with Visa, BT, major supermarket chains, banks, online gaming platforms and media.
GP practices across England warned they were unable to access EMIS Web, the UK's most widely used primary care clinical system.
It provides GP practices with the ability to make appointments and view records. It also includes a clinical decision support tool and helps with administration.
