WHEN COMPUTERS STOPPED WORKING ALL OVER THE WORLD.
I have tried to keep this article as simple as possible to ensure, all of us in Kodagu are aware of what happened in the world on 19th July, 2024. It is something all of us need to know and be prepared for, when we venture out of our district to distant places and get stuck with flights cancelled or ATMs failing to provide us money.
(What is the meaning of internet outage? Simply put, an internet outage is when your internet connection goes down, and you can’t access the internet. Outages can happen on a small scale, like just in your own home, or it can be a wider issue affecting your entire neighbourhood or region.)
On Friday, the 19th of July, the tech world saw chaos unfold. All computers using Bill Gates’ Microsoft Windows all over the world stopped working. Was it a virus that caused this outage? Was it a Cyber Attack? No. According to Crowdstrike boss George Kurtz, the issues are only impacting Windows PCs and no other operating systems, and were caused by a defect in an update. This was not an intended attack. It was a regular update of ‘Crowdstrike. It’s agent, ‘Falcon Sensor’ caused this crashing of innumerable computers, absolutely inadvertently. As a result, all those computer screens were displaying a ‘Blue Screen of Death’ on that fateful day.
This digital fiasco, did not just affect office workers. It sent shock waves through airports, banks, and media outlets all over the world. Reports of widespread system crashes flooded in, with ‘Down Detector’ tracking outages at major players like Visa, Amazon and airlines such as American Airlines and Delta.
IN INDIA
However the stock exchanges in India-NSE and BSE-managed to stay afloat while chaos reigned elsewhere. Immediately when this occurred, a statement from Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issued a dire advisory, that a major outage was wreaking havoc on Microsoft Windows systems. Now Microsoft 365 says it has completed its mitigation actions after this breakdown and its telemetry indicates that all previously impacted Microsoft 365 appliances and services have recovered. It is now entering a period of monitoring to ensure impact is fully resolved.
- In India, banks and payments systems were unaffected by the
Microsoft outage. Banking regulator RBI on Friday said, “Overall, the
Indian financial sector in the Reserve Bank’s domain remains insulated
from the global outage.” - India’s largest carrier Indigo cancelled 270 flights, as per the
information on its website at 8.30 pm, including 40 departures from
Mumbai and 33 each from Delhi and Bengaluru. - Others like SpiceJet, Akasa and Air India issued urgent advisories to
passengers as their online check-in and boarding systems went dark.
With digital processes in disarray, airlines were forced to resort to
manual operations, causing widespread disruptions and delays across
their networks.
HOME PERSONAL COMPUTERS WERE UN AFFECTED.
However, all our home PC s remained unaffected, because CrowdStrike’s products are predominantly used by major organisations needing robust cyber-attack protection and are rarely found on home PCs.
CHINA AND RUSSIA UN TOUCHED
- China and Russia reported zero technical glitches in corporate
computers, banks, and airlines following the big widespread IT outage
linked to Microsoft services on Friday, 19th morning, thanks to their
local technologies. The Beijing airport and Chinese airlines both
maintained that their operations were unaffected by the IT failures. - Over the years, China has taken concerted efforts to lessen its reliance
on Western service providers such as Microsoft and cybersecurity
businesses such as CrowdStrike. It intends to phase out the usage of Microsoft’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database
software on domestic PCs. - Russia has attempted to replace foreign goods imports in important sectors of the economy since 2014, when relations with the West deteriorated due to the annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin declared on Friday that its
systems were operational and unaffected by the Microsoft outage.
Conclusion: It is needless to say that, people should draw similar lessons from this global IT outage as they did from the pandemic that hit the world in 2019. It is imperative that we all make ourselves more resilient to be able to face many more such challenges in the future.
Major Biddanda Nanjappa,
Recipient of President’s Gold Medal
Convener FMCGT Forum.
The facts and views presented are of the author.
