Microsoft IT outage live: Travellers still stranded as experts warn problem is likely to happen again

A global IT outage is “likely” to occur again unless governments and industry work together to “design out” technological flaws, a leading cyber expert has said.

Professor Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said “the worst” of the global IT outage was over but countries would “have to learn to cope” with future flaws.

The founding chief executive of the NCSC told Sky News: “The worst of this is over because the nature of the crisis was such that it went very badly wrong, very quickly. It was spotted quite quickly and, essentially, it was turned off.”

Some 100,000 travellers were affected by the problems over the weekend, Simon Calder reports. Many of those are still stuck trying to reach their destinations, he says.

Delta Air Lines faced further operational issues on Sunday with over a thousand flights cancelled for the third straight day beyond the 3,500 the airlines had previously scrapped.

A Microsoft outage on Friday left thousands of Delta travellers stranded across the US this weekend as the global IT outage affected the airline company’s crew tracking system.

“In particular one of our crew tracking-related tools was affected and unable to effectively process the unprecedented number of changes triggered by the system shutdown,” Delta chief Ed Bastian told customers.

Delta has not yet offered any timetable for resuming normal operations with over 300 flights cancelled for Monday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.

As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain.

Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and even CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage.

“We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives.”

David Koenig and Isabella O’Malley report:

System failure caused by the global IT outage reportedly led to a massive grid-lock at the US-Mexico border with even approved Border Protection vehicles stranded for about 90 minutes.

Officials turned to workarounds like colour-coded cards to streamline processes, San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The outage also led to employees working with US government agencies missing work at the US border.

“Due to the global Windows outage, some of our staff are experiencing major delays getting across the border to come to work. This may result in missed or delayed service,” the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System posted on X.

CrowdStrike said a significant number of the over 8.5 million devices affected by last week’s botched software update are back online, Reuters reported.

Over the weekend, Microsoft deployed hundreds of its engineers to help its customers restore services after the global IT outage caused by its cyber security partner CrowdStrike.

Microsoft said over 8.5 million devices were affected by the outage, which led to airlines, banks, call centers, transportation and healthcare systems struggling worldwide.

CrowdStrike said the outage was caused by a defect in an update to its “Falcon” cybersecurity defence software for Windows hosts.

More than 1,500 flights were cancelled for the third straight day in the US yesterday amid a global tech outage due to CrowdStrike’s botched software update.

Thousands of passengers were left stranded at airports across the US as nearly 1,600 flights travelling within or out of the US were cancelled, and about 8,500 delayed on Sunday, data from flight tracking website FlightAware.com suggests.

Delta Air Lines chief Ed Bastian said the company is still working to recover its system and restore operations.

“Canceling a flight is always a last resort, and something we don’t take lightly,” Mr Bastian said.

The CEO of Crowdstrike, the company at the centre of the global IT outage, confirmed that the issue affecting millions of Windows devices “was not a security or cyber incident”.

Posting on the social media platform X on Friday afternoon, George Kurtz said: “Our customers remain fully protected.”