The source of the global IT outage has been “identified” and a “fix deployed”, but it still “could take some time”, the head of US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike has said.
Banks, airlines, train companies, telecommunications companies, broadcasters and supermarkets have been affected.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue is “not a security incident or cyberattack” but is a “defect” in a “single content update for Windows hosts”.
Microsoft IT outage: Follow live
“Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” Mr Kurtz said.
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
CrowdStrike will provide “complete and continuous updates” on its website, Mr Kurtz added, referring customers to the “support portal for the latest updates”.
Speaking to NBC, Mr Kurtz said: “We’re deeply sorry for problems caused to customers and travellers. It’s been a long night but we are rebooting systems.
“So, it could be some time for some systems, it [won’t] just automatically recover.
“It wasn’t a cyber attack. It was related to this, this content update.
“But it’s our mission… to make sure that every customer is fully recovered.
“The system update had a bug in it. Now we are working with each and every customer to bring them back online.
“When you look at the complexity of cybersecurity, we are trying to stay one step ahead of the adversaries.
“Our systems are looking for the latest attacks from adversaries.
“We have to back and see what happened. If there’s a negative interaction.
CrowdStrike’s “Falcon Sensor” software was allegedly causing Windows to crash and display a blue screen, according to an alert sent by the company to its clients and seen by the Reuters news agency.
The alert, issued at 0530 GMT on Friday, reportedly included a manual workaround to rectify the issue.
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