Airlines and businesses are slowly getting back to normal after global technology outage

Passengers stranded at the airports after the global technology outage. Photo: Reuters

Airlines, websites and businesses struggled to slowly back to normal on Friday after an extensive global technology outage that took down airlines, medical services, TV broadcasts, banks and scores of other businesses and services around the world. It was a stunning example of the fragile dependence the global economy has on certain software and the cascading effect it can have when things go wrong.

It has been clarified that the outage was attributed to CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm whose software is used by scores of industries around the world to protect against hackers and outside breaches. A software update issued by CrowdStrike appeared to be at the root of the problem, resulting in crashes of machines running the Microsoft Windows operating system.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” said George Kurtz, the chief executive of CrowdStrike. “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

全球技術中斷後，航空公司和企業正在慢慢恢復正常

週五，全球範圍內的技術中斷導致航空公司、醫療服務、電視廣播、銀行以及許多其他企業和服務癱瘓，航空公司、網站和企業難以緩慢恢復正常。 這是一個令人震驚的例子，說明了全球經濟對某些軟體的脆弱依賴，以及當出現問題時可能產生的連鎖效應。

現已澄清，此次中斷是由網路安全公司 CrowdStrike 造成的，該公司的軟體被全球許多行業用來防止駭客和外部破壞。

CrowdStrike 發布的軟體更新似乎是問題的根源，導致運行 Microsoft Windows 作業系統的電腦崩潰。

「這不是安全事件或網路攻擊，」CrowdStrike 執行長 George Kurtz 表示。 “問題已被識別、隔離，並已部署修復程序。”