Workers around the world woke up to a global IT outage on Friday morning, as CrowdStrike Windows’ software stopped functioning.
A flawed software update sent companies everywhere into utter chaos as airlines, banks, broadcasters, hospitals and many more organisations were affected.
Meanwhile, social media’s jokers managed to go into overdrive...
In the UK, hospitals and clinics ended up returning to paper charts and handwritten prescriptions today to keep the NHS up and running, although luckily there was no impact on emergency services or 999.
George Kurtz, founder and chief executive of the cyber security company CrowdStrike, which was behind the Microsoft update, told NBC that his team were “deeply sorry for impact that we’ve caused to customers”.
He explained the bug in a single update was identified very quickly, and his company was now “working with each and every customer to make sure that we can bring them back online”.
He also made it clear that there was no chance the IT meltdown was due to a cyber attack.
But, he said it would take some time for “some systems” to return to normal, and they would not “just automatically recover”.
Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, told the BBC: “Cobra officials met this morning.
“I’ve been kept updated about the situation throughout the day, the prime minister has been kept informed. We will have a further meeting later today to make sure we are across the situation.
“But as far as government services goes, the online services that government provides, these are largely unaffected now, and it’s important that’s the case because a lot of vulnerable people depend on these services.”
The two other major operating systems, Linux and Apple, were unaffected.