Shares of tech major Microsoft Corp. were losing around 2 percent and cybersecurity company Crowdstrike were down 12 percent in the pre-market trading on the Nasdaq following global outage that hit millions around the world.
Microsoft Windows users across the world are facing severe outage as they get the Blue Screen of Death or BSOD error, which causes the system to suddenly shut down or restart. The error is said to have caused due to a recent update with CrowdStrike, the firm that protects institutions and their hardware from cyber threats.
The outage has impacted businesses and services around the world. Global airlines are facing troubles in operations and are forced to cancel flights. Other critical systems, such as hospitals and financial institutions, including stock exchanges and banks, as well as media outlets were also hit by the technical glitch with Windows.
Meanwhile, the companies said they are resolving the issues.
Responding to the outage, CrowdStrike in a statement said the customers were impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts, and that the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
CrowdStrike noted that it is not a security incident or cyberattack, and that Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.
\"We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they\'re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels,\" it said.
Microsoft noted that a subset of customers may experience issues with multiple Azure services in the Central US region including failures with service management operations and connectivity or availability of services.
A Microsoft spokesperson was quoted as saying, \"We\'re aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming.\"
Microsoft further said users may be unable to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services.
According to the company, a configuration change in a portion of its Azure backend workloads, caused interruption between storage and compute resources which resulted in connectivity failures that affected downstream Microsoft 365 services dependent on these connections.
In many countries across the world, tens of thousands of customers and air and rail passengers have been stranded due to their respective service providers\' inability to operate due to the glitch.
The Federal Aviation Administration announced that several major US carriers, including Delta, United and American Airlines, have grounded their flights.
American Airlines and the Swiss cyber security office cited a technical issue with Crowdstrike.
United Airlines said that a third party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide, including at United. The company said it is working to restore those systems, and are holding all aircraft at their departure airports. Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations, it said.
In the pre-market activity on the Nasdaq, Microsoft is at $433.85, down 1.5 percent, and Crowdstrike is at $302.93, down 11.7 percent.