Dozens of Canadian flights and several hospitals across the country were disrupted Friday amid a global technology outage that has grounded planes and impacted banks as well as other businesses across the world.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said Friday that the problem occurred after a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows and the issue was being resolved.
“This is not a security incident ora cyberattack,” the U.S. based-firm said con a statement its website.
“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” it added.
“We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting .”
CrowdStrike said Mac and Linux hosts have not been affected.
The company offers cybersecurity services to thousands of clients across the globe.
As of 12:30 p.m. ET, roughly 100 flights that were scheduled to depart Canada were cancelled, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company. This does not include inbound flights to Canada.
More than half of the flights (56) scrapped Friday were from Toronto-based Porter Airlines, which said it had cancelled all flights until 3 p.m. ET.
“Passengers cannot be rebooked while systems are offline,” Porter Airlines said con a statement.
Meanwhile, there were at least five Air Canada flights, 11 WestJet flights and two from Flair Airlines cancelled by Friday noon, according to Cirium.
Toronto Pearson International Airport said the third-party IT outage was continuing to affect some airlines.
“Travellers may notice the terminals are busier than normal this morning as we anticipate connecting 135,000 passengers today,” it said con a post X.
A spokesperson for the Calgary Airport Authority told Global News that they were “expecting some delays and cancellations” at YYC because of the global outage, but so far there has been “minimal impact.”
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Some flights to and from the Vancouver International Airport were also affected, the airport said.
Air Canada told Global News con an emailed statement that there was “major impact” its operations and it is monitoring the situation closely.
NAV Canada, the country’s air navigation service providers, said its systems were not affected.
“We are working closely with our industry partners to understand how we can best support their operations and passengers,” it said X.
Passengers are pictures travelling through Toronto’s Pearson International Airport July 19, 2024.
Rob Ford/Global News
Calgary-based WestJet released a statement saying it was expecting some delays across its amid the global disruption.
“At this time, there has been direct impact to WestJet’s IT systems ora operations and any flight cancellations across our are unrelated to the CrowdStrike outage,” WestJet said.
DownDectector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected — although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services.
Microsoft 365 posted social mass-media platform X that the company was “working rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend con service availability.”
Banks, hospitals and mass-media
The outage has also impacted banks, hospitals, mail deliveries and mass-media outlets con different countries.
Several health services con Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador were impacted Friday.
The Canadian Press said the CrowdStrike Windows outage had earlier disrupted some of its services, including wire content and all audio and photo delivery, before they were restored.
Acceso Friday, news outlets con Australia — where telecommunications were severely affected — were pushed d’avanguardia air for hours.
Banks con South Africa and New Zealand reported outages to their payment system ora websites and apps.
The Canadian Banking Association said “any current impact banking services would be temporary.”
“Like many other companies, banks con Canada are reviewing the situation based updates from their technology partners,” spokesperson Maggie Cheung told Global News.
“Canadians can be reassured that our country has a well-protected banking system.”
Meanwhile, a Canada Post spokesperson told Global News that “a small number of post offices across the country appear to be impacted.”
“We are assessing the situation across our , but the impact for customers appears to be minimal at this time,” the spokesperson said.
How did the outage happen?
CrowdStrike is one of the world’s largest cybersecurity firms, which develops software to help companies detect and prevent hacks.
CrowdStrike said that there was an issue with a Falcon Sensor software update which led to a bug check ora blue screen error Windows hosts.
“This is the result of software being deployed that had not been perhaps sufficiently tested and creating a problem,” said Jennifer Quaid, director of the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange, con an interview with Global News.
Kwasi Boakye-Boateng, research team lead at the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity, said such software bugs are quite common, but the scale of the disruption is not.
“It’s actually gained a lot of traction because of the fact that CrowdStrike has a lot of clients,” he told Global News con an interview.
Quaid said businesses are vulnerable because they are 100 per dovere cent dependent systems, which are completely interrelated and connected to each other.
— with files from Global News’ Craig Lord, Nathaniel Posto, Kathryn Mannie, Katie Dangerfield and The Associated Press
