WELLINGTON, New Zealand (WPRI/AP) — A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world on Friday, including in Southern New England.
Escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.
The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta.
We have a team of reporters gathering information on the local impacts. Check back for updates, and tune in to 12 News at Noon for the latest.
View: Airports | Hospitals | DMV/RMV | Police | National Impacts
Airports
At Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport, the flight information boards were temporarily down and travelers are frustrated.
Long lines were seen at the Delta and Breeze Airways counters with many people saying their flights had been canceled or delayed, and they didn’t find out until they arrived.
“The airport (PVD) is fully operational however, please check with your airline regarding flight status. The TSA checkpoint is open as are all airport parking and concessions operations,” TF Green posted on Facebook.
Flight Tracker: Airports & Flights Delay Map
At Boston Logan Airport, many flights were also delayed or canceled. The airport said passengers should check with their airlines for updates.
Hospitals
All Lifespan Health Systems are also experiencing downtime due to a global IT issue through CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity vendor.
“Our hospitals will continue to perform all urgent procedures and will monitor the situation for non-urgent procedures. Patients will be contacted if there are changes to their scheduled appointments or procedures for today,” a spokesperson for Lifespan told 12 News.
Care New England experienced a “brief” interruption, according to a spokesperson. Systems have since been assessed and they do not expect any additional interruption.
Rhode Island DMV and Massachusetts RMV
All Rhode Island Division of Motor Vehicles offices were back up and running by 11 a.m.
Any appointments that were affected by the outage Friday morning will be honored through Wednesday, July 31, according to the DMV.
The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles said all service center and AAA appointments are canceled until noon. In addition:
- Road tests are being conducted
- Online credit card payments are down
- Checks are still being accepted
- Vehicle inspections are unavailable
- RMV has limited capacity to accept calls
Police Departments
Rhode Island State Police Col. Darnell Weaver told 12 News that the statewide 911 system has not been impacted.
However, a number of police departments experienced disruptions to their IT systems as a result of the worldwide outage, according to the Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association. It has not caused any interruptions to public safety.
A spokesperson for Providence said the city’s computers and phones are working, but it’s not yet clear if emergency services are affected in any way.
Mystic Aquarium
Since the aquarium’s system is down, it’s had to revert to paper tickets, which caused a line that wrapped around the building.
Long lines formed at airports in the U.S., Europe and Asia as airlines lost access to check-in and booking services at a time when many travelers are heading away on summer vacations. News outlets in Australia — where telecommunications were severely affected — were pushed off air for hours. Hospitals and doctor’s offices had problems with their appointment systems, while banks in South Africa and New Zealand reported outages to their payment system or websites and apps.
At Hong Kong’s airport, Yvonne Lee, 24, said she only found out her flight to Phuket in Thailand was postponed to Saturday when she arrived at the airport, saying the way it was handled would “affect the image of Hong Kong’s airport very much.”
Her already short five-day trip would now have to be further shortened, she said.
Some athletes and spectators descending on Paris ahead of the Olympics were delayed as was the arrival of their uniforms and accreditations, but Games organizers said disruptions were limited and didn’t affect ticketing or the torch relay.
A disturbing reminder of vulnerability
“This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, a professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and former Head of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre.
DownDectector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected — although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services.
Cyber expert James Bore said real harm would be caused by the outage because systems we’ve come to rely on at critical times are not going to be available. Hospitals, for example, will struggle to sort out appointments and those who need care may not get it.
“There are going to be deaths because of this. It’s inevitable,’’ Bore said. “We’ve got so many systems tied up with this.”
Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
CrowdStrike said in an emailed statement that the company “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”
It said: “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
The Austin, Texas-based company’s Nasdaq-traded shares were down nearly 15% in premarket trading early Friday.
A recording playing on its customer service line said, “CrowdStrike is aware of the reports of crashes on Microsoft ports related to the Falcon sensor,” referring to one of its products used to block online attacks.
Broadcasters go dark, surgeries delayed, ‘blue screens of death’
Meanwhile, governments, officials and companies across the world scrambled to respond.
New Zealand’s acting prime minister, David Seymour, said on X that officials in the country were “moving at pace to understand the potential impacts,” adding that he had no information indicating it was a cybersecurity threat.
The issue was causing “inconvenience” for the public and businesses, he added.
On the Milan stock exchange, the FTSE MIB index of blue-chip Italian stocks could not be compiled for an hour, though trading continued.
Major delays reported at airports grew on Friday morning, with most attributing the problems in booking systems of individual airlines.
In the U.S., the FAA said the airlines United, American, Delta and Allegiant had all been grounded.
Airlines and railways in the U.K. were also affected, with longer than usual waiting times.
In Germany, Berlin-Brandenburg Airport halted flights for several hours due to difficulties in checking in passengers, while landings at Zurich airport were suspended and flights in Hungary, Italy and Turkey disrupted.
The Dutch carrier KLM said it had been “forced to suspend most” of its operations.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport warned that the outage was having a “major impact on flights” to and from the busy European hub. The chaotic morning coincided with one of the busiest days of the year for Schiphol.
Widespread problems were reported at Australian airports, where lines grew and some passengers were stranded as online check-in services and self-service booths were disabled — although flights were still operating.
In India, Hong Kong and Thailand, many airlines were forced to manually check in passengers. An airline in Kenya was also reporting disruption.
Australia bears brunt of outages in Asia
While the outages were being experienced worldwide, Australia appeared to be severely affected by the issue. Disruption reported on the site DownDetector included the banks NAB, Commonwealth and Bendigo, and the airlines Virgin Australia and Qantas, as well as internet and phone providers such as Telstra.
National news outlets — including public broadcaster ABC and Sky News Australia — were unable to broadcast on their TV and radio channels for hours. Some news anchors went on air online from dark offices, in front of computers showing “blue screens of death.”
Hospitals in several countries also reported problems.
Britain’s National Health Service said the outage caused problems at most doctors’ offices across England. NHS England said in a statement said the glitch was affecting the appointment and patient record system used across the public health system.
Some hospitals in northern Germany canceled all elective surgery scheduled for Friday, but emergency care was unaffected.
Israel said its hospitals and post office operations were disrupted.
In South Africa, at least one major bank said it was experiencing nationwide service disruptions as customers reported they were unable to make payments using their bank cards in stores. The New Zealand banks ASB and Kiwibank said their services were down as well.
Shipping was disrupted too: A major container hub in the Baltic port of Gdansk, Poland, the Baltic Hub, said it was battling problems resulting from the global system outage.
What happens now?
Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
The company did not respond to a request for comment. It did not explain the cause of the outage further.