Less than two weeks after global outage, dubbed as “blue screen of death”, Microsoft suffered another similar incident, which the company said was triggered by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattack. According to Forbes, the latest attack was reported by several users on Tuesday in which users complained of not being able to access several Microsoft services, such as Office, Outlook and Azure. The incident lasted nearly 10 hours. Companies affected by the new outage include UK bank NatWest, as per the BBC.

Other impacted services included Azure App Services, Application Insights, Azure IoT Central, Azure Log Search Alerts, Azure Policy, as well as the Azure portal itself and “a subset of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Purview services”.

The tech giant said it was a DDoS attack that floods a service with traffic in order to bring them to a standstill.

Firms usually put protection in place for DDoS attacks, but an error in the implementation of defences “amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it”, said Microsoft.

This is the second major attack in nearly as many weeks. A Microsoft error had crippled Windows computers worldwide on July 19. It was later revealed that an update to the anti-virus program ‘Falcon Sensor’ by CrowdStrike caused the massive outage.

From airlines to news channels, the glitch led to the crashing of IT systems, disrupting the daily proceedings.

CrowdStrike’s products are predominantly used by major organisations needing robust cyber attack protection, which is why the attack caused a global outage.

Reacting to the glitch, Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said it was not a security incident or cyberattack. The company identified the issue, isolated it and deployed a fix.

Imagine a scene from Neuromancer: hackers breaking in, causing chaos with every keystroke. Now, flash back to this Friday. That sci-fi scenario? It’s suddenly not so fictional. A botched software update has just thrown real life into disarray. Planes grounded, emergency lines jammed, and check-in counters swamped with long, snaking lines of frustrated travellers.

The Microsoft outage has disrupted India’s aviation sector. As major airlines like Vistara, IndiGo, SpiceJet, and Akasa Air scramble with systems down, passengers face the brunt-endless lines, delayed flights, and a ticking clock. Even as airports like Delhi and Bengaluru report disruptions in up to 90% of flights, the response has been reactive, not proactive.

Also Read | The ‘Fake’ CrowdStrike Worker Who Crippled Windows Users Worldwide

This isn’t a plot twist from Mr. Robot, where vigilantes manipulate the digital world for justice or chaos. This is our reality-the infrastructure teetering on the edge because of a glitch. As we stand in overcrowded terminals or seek urgent help to no avail, the dystopian futures of cyberpunk are already knocking on our door.

Who Pays When Software Fails Us?

Think about the price tag of such an outage. Airlines cancel thousands of flights, hospitals delay life-saving procedures, and emergency responders hit a wall. The immediate cost is staggering, sure. But what about the long game? Lost trust, furious customers, and shaken investor confidence can balloon these costs to even more astronomical levels. How many millions – or billions – are we talking about here?

Why aren’t Microsoft or CrowdStrike held to the same stringent standards as those in more traditional sectors? A single faulty brake pad can trigger nationwide recalls in the automotive world. So why does the tech industry get a free pass when their mistakes can shut down our hospitals, ground our planes, and leave us stranded at check-in counters? It’s ridiculous.

Also Read | Airports Clearing Backlog After Global IT Chaos, Centre Shares An Update

When the digital infrastructure crumbles, the fallout is accepted as part of the modern condition. And where’s the backup plan? Our entire digital life hangs by the thread of a few lines of code with no strong fail-safe in sight. Why isn’t there a robust Plan B when Plan A fails so spectacularly? Shouldn’t there be mandatory, iron-clad redundancies for technologies that our lives depend on?

Another tech glitch, and who’s caught in the crossfire? The users, because we’re over-reliant on platforms like Microsoft. They blame CrowdStrike, but that’s not the point. Apple and Linux users dodged the bullet-why aren’t we spreading our risks? It’s high time we break up with single-system dependency.

We need more than apologies when tech systems fail disastrously. It’s time for stringent regulations to hold tech giants like Microsoft and their partners accountable, just as any other sector crucial to public safety and welfare would be.

Our reliance on these platforms is too critical to allow the ‘single-system dependency’ to continue unchecked. Let’s push for diversity in our tech solutions to safeguard our digital – and physical – lives. 

(Pankaj Mishra has been a journalist for over two decades and is the co-founder of FactorDaily.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

Washington, United States:

Catastrophic computer outages caused by a software update from one company have once again exposed the dangers of global technological dependence on a handful of players, experts warned on Friday.

A flawed update sent out by the little-known security firm CrowdStrike brought airlines, TV stations, and myriad other aspects of daily life to a standstill. 

The outages affected companies or individuals that use CrowdStrike on the Microsoft Windows platform: when they applied the update, the incompatible software crashed computers into a frozen state known as the “Blue Screen of Death.”

“Today CrowdStrike has become a household name, but not in a good way, and this will take time to settle down,” said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.

The breakdown quickly fueled discussions about internet giants’ power over the increasingly digital world economy, with more activity now taking place in the computing “cloud” or on a few apps or platforms. 

Just ‘a taste’

When those platforms have flaws — or are deliberately attacked — the world seems to collapse. 

In recent months, entire healthcare systems and industries have been paralyzed after hackers infiltrated their systems, leaving consumers at their wits’ end and companies at a loss.

“I think we’re just getting a taste of some potential effects of real reliance by the financial sector and sectors across the economy on a handful of cloud companies and other key systems,” Rohit Chopra, director of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told CNBC.

“There are just a handful of big cloud companies where so much of the economy is now resting.”

The world has seen a major shift to cloud computing, where companies use servers offered by big tech giants for their computing needs instead of their own infrastructure. 

Amazon, through its AWS company, is the world leader, followed by Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud.

Friday’s breakdown was caused by a malfunctioning software update fed to Microsoft Windows users by CrowdStrike, which specializes in cybersecurity for cloud-based companies. 

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact we’ve caused to customers, travelers, and anyone affected by this,” CrowdStrike CEO Kurtz said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show.

Microsoft blamed the problems on CrowdStrike, but industry insiders warned that the issue stems from entrusting the digital world to just a few key companies. 

“It’s going to continue to raise issues for systems or businesses wholly dependent on Microsoft — this issue of concentration risk,” Michael Daniel, former White House cybersecurity coordinator and current head of the Cyber Threat Alliance told AFP.

“How do you balance the benefits of having everybody on the same operating system with the concentration risk that poses?”

Callie Guenther, senior manager of cyber threat research at Critical Start, warned that the shift to big players amplifies the impact of any system failure or vulnerability. 

One error, like CrowdStrike’s on Friday, threatens society’s smooth functioning worldwide, she said.

No contingency plan 

Andrius Minkevicius, co-founder of Cyber Upgrade, a cybersecurity company, said that businesses must fight the complacency often associated with outsourcing technology to the big vendors. 

“Today, we’re seeing an example of those who relied mostly on vendor-offered cyber protection without additional contingency plans and are now suffering reputational and financial damage,” he said.

Experts warn that this incident will likely invite scrutiny from regulators and officials.

“CrowdStrike will probably have to let some outside people come in and examine how this happened,” said Cyber Threat Alliance’s Daniel. 

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Businesses and services around the world are slowly recovering after a massive IT outage affected computer systems worldwide on Friday. Experts, however, said getting them back online would take time.

Here are 10 points on the big story

Washington DC:

Air passengers around the United States faced delays, while some airlines halted flight operations as Microsoft-based computers ceased to work after a global outage on Friday.

Many airports across the US experienced unexpected disruption with over 1,100 flights getting cancelled and over 1,700 flights operating behind schedule on Friday morning (local time) after certain cloud services of Microsoft were disrupted.

These disruptions gave a hard time to people flying to and from different airports across the US, with many of them expressing their frustration over the unexpected delays and cancellations of flights.

“No one here knows anything, the gate agents said we all know as much as they do,” a United Airlines passenger told ANI, saying his flight from Milwaukee to Washington was delayed for hours first at the gates and then hours on the tarmac.

Another passenger, Mack, said, “I am on my way home…I did not know that the internet was out. It is a global outage.”

A passenger named Giane said, “I did not hear anything from the airline that I am travelling from. I just saw a news pop up on my phone…I am tired, I want to get home.”

CrowdStrike — an American cybersecurity technology firm that provides cloud workload protection, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services – said the outage, which sparked chaos for many, was not a ‘cyberattack’. Instead, there was an issue with software and a fix had been deployed.

Several US carriers, including American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines, issued ground stops for all their flights early on Friday due to communication problems, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The FAA told air traffic controllers to tell airborne pilots that airlines are currently experiencing communication issues. There were over 1,100 flights cancelled and more than 1,700 delays as of 8:05 am ET (Eastern Time), according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

“A third-party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide, including at United,” United Airlines said in a statement on Friday morning. “While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports. Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations.”

“We’re aware of a technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple carriers. American is working with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience,” American Airlines said in a statement.

The outage also affected industries ranging from banks to media companies.

“We’re investigating an issue impacting users’ ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services,” Microsoft said in a statement released on social media Friday morning.

After various businesses across the world reported IT outages on Friday, which included seeing the ‘Windows blue screen of death’, CrowdStrike, the security firm linked to a software update that caused the outage said earlier in the day, that the issue has been isolated and a fix deployed.

George Kurtz, President and CEO of CrowdStrike, said the cybersecurity company was working with customers on the issues they faced while giving reassurance that the issue was “not a security incident or cyberattack.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also reacted to the outage and said Microsoft is working closely with CrowdStrike to provide technical guidance and support to the customers.

“Yesterday, CrowdStrike released an update that began impacting IT systems globally. We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online,” Nadella posted on X.

On Friday the outage affected companies across various sectors, from airlines, banks, food chains and brokerage houses, to news organisations and railway networks. The travel industry was greatly affected, causing significant delays in flights across the world.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Mumbai:

The Indian financial and payments systems remained largely unaffected by the Microsoft services outage, though about 10 banks and NBFCs faced minor disruptions which have either been resolved or are being fixed.

A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world on Friday. Escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.

A new CrowdStrike (cybersecurity software firm) update is being cited as the cause of the outage, which has impacted Windows-based desktop and laptops.

The large-scale outage in Microsoft services is impacting IT systems globally leading to disruptions in various sectors.

The Reserve Bank said it has made an assessment of the impact of this outage on its regulated entities.

“Critical systems of most banks are not in cloud and further, only a few banks are using the CrowdStrike tool. Our assessment shows that only 10 banks and NBFCs had minor disruptions which have either been resolved or are being resolved,” RBI said in a statement.

Overall, it said the Indian financial sector in the Reserve Bank’s domain remains insulated from the global outage.

Meanwhile, SBI Chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara told PTI that “We (SBI) are all fine”. SBI is the country’s largest lender and commands nearly 25 per cent market share.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) chief executive Dilip Asbe too said the country’s payments architecture, including the widely popular Unified Payments Interface, has been unaffected.

HDFC Bank, the biggest among the private sector lenders, also said that it has not faced any impact of the outage.

“Our systems are unaffected by the global outage. There is no impact on banking operations,” said Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, the group head for information technology at HDFC Bank.

Officials at ICICI Bank and Axis Bank also said that their systems were working fine and showing no impact of the outage.

The RBI said it has issued an advisory to all of its Regulated Entities for taking necessary steps to remain alert and ensure operational resilience and continuity.

A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world on Friday.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Paris:

Paris Olympics organisers said on Friday they were experiencing problems linked to a major worldwide computer systems outage, a week before the Games’ opening ceremony takes place.

The issues came as a major outage wrought havoc on computer systems worldwide, grounding flights in the United States, derailing television broadcasts in the UK and impacting telecommunications in Australia.

“Paris 2024 is aware of global technical issues affecting Microsoft software. These issues are impacting Paris 2024’s IT operations,” organisers said.

“Paris 2024’s technical teams have been fully mobilised to mitigate the impacts of these issues and we have activated contingency plans in order to continue operations,” they added.

A source at the Paris Olympic Games organising committee said the problem is affecting the accreditation system with some people unable to pick up badges before next Friday’s ceremony on the River Seine.

The source added it could also affect the arrival of athletes who have had flights cancelled after the athletes’ Olympic village welcomed its first guests on Thursday.

The London Stock Exchange (LSE), airports in Spain, the Netherlands and Hong Kong as well as production at US carmaker Tesla’s plant outside Berlin have also been disrupted.

Microsoft said in a statement it was taking “mitigation actions” in response to service issues.

It was not clear if those were linked to the global outages.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Tech giants Google and Microsoft each consumed 24 TWh of electricity in 2023, surpassing the consumption of more than 100 countries, new research claims.

Analysis by Michael Thomas, shared on X, states that both Google and Microsoft used the same amount of energy as Azerbaijan, which has a GDP of $78.7 billion. In 2023, Google’s revenue was $307.4 billion, and Microsoft’s was $211.9 billion, Tech Radar reported. 

This massive energy usage underscores the significant environmental impact of these companies but also highlights their potential to lead more sustainable initiatives.

For comparison, Iceland, Ghana, the Dominican Republic, and Tunisia each consumed 19 TWh, while Jordan consumed 20 TWh. Libya (25 TWh) and Slovakia (26 TWh) used slightly more power.

The comparison between entire countries and two single companies emphasizes the colossal energy demands of Big Tech. It also points to the environmental impacts of data centers that power cloud services and the new generation of artificial intelligence.

The significant electricity consumption of these companies calls for ongoing discussions around sustainability and renewable energy adoption. Both Google and Microsoft have pledged to be carbon-free or carbon-negative by the end of the decade and have significantly scaled up investments in cleaner energies and energy matching.

With market caps of $2.294 trillion and $3.372 trillion respectively, Google and Microsoft are currently the world’s fourth and second-most valuable companies. Given the scale of their operations, comparable to entire nations, their actions in preventing and reversing environmental damage are closely watched.

Steve Ballmer passed Bill Gates on Monday to become the sixth-richest person in the world, the first time the former chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp. has been wealthier than the company’s co-founder.

The move came as Microsoft shares rose to a fresh record, bringing their total gain this year to 21%. The company, through its partnership with OpenAI, has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence rally that has powered the US stock market higher.

More than 90% of Ballmer’s $157.2 billion net worth is in Microsoft shares, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Gates, meanwhile, has diversified his $156.7 billion fortune: About half his wealth is held through Cascade Investment, which was created with the proceeds of Microsoft stock sales and dividends. He also owns a $21 billion stake in waste-management company Republic Services Inc. through Cascade. 

Gates, 68, has been slowly reducing his fortune through philanthropy. Along with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates and his friend Warren Buffett, Gates has funneled billions of dollars of his personal money to build up the $75 billion Gates Foundation, one of the biggest charitable organizations in the world.

Since they started the foundation more than two decades ago, Gates and his former wife have given almost $60 billion from their personal fortunes. French Gates recently stepped down as co-chair of the foundation and received $12.5 billion to use for her own charitable purposes.

In 2010, Gates, French Gates and Buffett also founded the Giving Pledge, an organization that encourages the world’s richest people to give away the majority of their fortunes in their lifetimes or their wills. Ballmer, 68, who has not signed the Giving Pledge, has his own philanthropic work but nowhere on the scale of Gates.

Gates founded Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen in 1975 and led it until 2000, when Ballmer – one of the company’s earliest employees – replaced him as CEO. Ballmer retired in 2014 and became Microsoft’s largest shareholder that same year. He bought the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion in 2014, an investment that is estimated to be worth $4.6 billion today.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A smartphone with a displayed NVIDIA logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Nvidia edged ahead of other tech companies on June 18 to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company in the latest sign of the might of artificial intelligence.

The chip company, which has enjoyed a monumental ascent over the last 18 months amid enthusiasm over generative AI, jumped 3.4% near 1.25 p.m. (10.55 p.m. IST), giving it a market capitalisation of about $3.3 trillion, slightly ahead of Microsoft and Apple.

The California-based company, which is led by Jensen Huang, has seen profits soar due to torrid demand for its powerful GPU chips, which have set the industry’s pace in pushing new advances in AI.

In May, Nvidia reported a net profit of $14.9 billion, while its revenue of $26 billion was almost four times what it took in during the same fiscal quarter last year.

“We believe over the next year the race to $4 trillion market cap in tech will be front and center between Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft,” said a note earlier this week from Wedbush Securities.

“Nvidia’s GPU chips are in essence the new gold or oil in the tech sector as more enterprises and consumers quickly head down this path with the 4th Industrial Revolution well underway.”