'We understand the gravity of the situation' | Crowdstrike CEO releases statement as tech outage causes global disruption (2024)

FRANKFURT, Germany — A global technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks and media outlets offline and disrupted hospitals, small businesses and other services on Friday.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

"We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption," Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said.

In an interview with the TODAY Show, Kurtz explained the outage was caused by a software bug included in an update that went out to Windows machines. He said the issue was identified quickly and a fix was sent out, bringing some computers back online quickly.

"We identified this very quickly and remediated the issue," Kurtz said. "And as systems come back online, as they're being rebooted, they're coming back and they're working."

Despite that, Kurtz said some systems weren't able to accept the automatic update to fix the bug. For those systems, it could be a while before operations are restored.

"Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and (being) operational because we fixed it on our end," he said. "Some of the systems that aren't recovering, we're working with them. It could be come time for some systems that just automatically won't recover."

Major Airline Disruptions

The outage grounded major U.S. airlines for several hours, leaving millions of travelers stranded.

Allegiant Airlines shared a statement around 11:28 a.m. that every flight before 2 p.m. Friday is canceled.

Around 8 a.m., Delta posted an update saying it resumed some flights and its issued a travel waiver.

As of 6:30 a.m., United Airlines said the outage was still impacting flights at several airports, including Denver, Washington, Cleveland, Houston, Los Angeles and New York. It said it would be issuing waivers for people to change their travel plans via its website.

"As we work to fully restore these systems, some flights are resuming. Many customers traveling today may experience delays," United said.

As of 5:45 a.m., American Airlines said it was re-establishing operations. Around 10:30 a.m., the airline announced that it would be issuing travel waivers.

Problems Around The Country

You can read how the outage is impacting East Tennesseeanshere.

Officials in some U.S. states, including Alaska, Virginia and Iowa, warned of problems to 911 emergency call centers in their areas. Alaska State Troopers warned that many 911 and nonemergency call centers across the state weren't working correctly and shared alternate numbers.

In Virginia, the City of Fairfax Police Department said on social media that it was experiencing technical difficulties with its phone systems, including 911. The department shared a nonemergency number for callers and said 911 could still be used, but calls wouldn't go directly to the dispatch center.

The New Hampshire Emergency Services and Communications reported a temporary interruption to 911 calls early Friday, with the system fully restored several hours later, officials said. In Iowa, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office warned on social media that phone lines were down and 911 calls might be routed to neighboring counties, but emergency calls would be promptly redirected to the sheriff’s office.

In New England, the outage led some hospitals to cancel appointments.

A spokesman at Mass General Brigham, the largest health care system in Massachusetts, said the outage had resulted in all scheduled nonurgent surgeries, procedures and medical visits being canceled for Friday. Emergency departments remain open and care for patients in the hospital hasn't been impacted.

The Associated Press has the latest updates regarding outage impacts around the countryhere.

Global Disruption

In Canada, the outage grounded some flights, disrupted hospitals and backed up border crossings Friday.

The London Stock Exchange says it is experiencing disruptions from the technology outage that has created chaos around the globe.

Paris Olympics organizers say some Olympic delegations’ arrivals, as well as the delivery of some uniforms and accreditations, have been delayed because of the outage.

The organizers said in a statement that ticketing and the torch relay haven't been affected.

“Our teams have been fully mobilized to ensure the continuity of operations at optimum levels,” organizers said.

Bradesco, one of the main banks in Brazil, notified its users via its app that digital services were unstable due to a global cyber outage, but its ATMs were working normally. Bradesco has over 100 million clients.

The National Center for Cyber Security in Sri Lanka says four information technology companies in Sri Lanka have been affected because of the global outage.

In South Africa, at least two major banks said they experienced service disruptions as customers complained they weren’t able to make payments using their bank cards at grocery stores and gas stations or use ATMs. Both said they were able to restore services hours later.

Two pharmacy chains in Norway said they are having problems providing customers with their prescription medicine and are facing substantial connection delays because of global network problems.