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Microsoft Windows outage causes global infrastructure shutdown

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Microsoft Windows outage causes global infrastructure shutdown

Computer systems were shut down at major corporations, small businesses, government offices and organizations around the world on Friday when two commonly used information technology infrastructure components failed simultaneously.

Screens show a blue error message at a departure floor of LaGuardia Airport in New York on Friday, July 19, 2024, after a faulty CrowdStrike update caused a major internet outage for computers running Microsoft Windows. [AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura]

Airports, banks, ground transportation, healthcare service providers, hotels, media and TV stations, retail businesses and more were brought to a halt by a digital catastrophe that began on Thursday night when Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform experienced a widespread outage.

The cloud services failure was followed on Friday morning by a flawed update to a security software provided by CrowdStrike, impacting computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. A software update that was pushed out to CrowdStrike’s Falcon monitoring software sent Windows computers into a perpetual reboot cycle.

Microsoft spokesperson Frank X. Shaw confirmed that “a CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of Windows systems globally.” Shaw said the company was supporting and assisting customers to recover from the disaster.

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