A software bug likely caused disruption on the global scale on Friday, halting government services, airports, banks, stock exchanges, telecommunications networks, supermarkets, health systems, and even media outlets in several major countries.
The outage ground to halt airlines and railways, abruptly halting transportation for millions across the globe.
The glitch was likely caused by a software update pushed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The update caused millions of computers operating on Microsoft's Windows operating system to crash and display the dreaded 'Blue Screen of Death'.
Disruptions were reported from across Europe, North America and even in the east in India.
Users reported that they were stationed at their designated terminals running Microsoft Windows when their systems suddenly went blank and then froze, giving the blue screen of death (a euphemism for a critical error displayed on Windows machines on a blue background).
CrowdStrike CEO Goerge Kurtz admitted to the critical global error and said they were working with customers to roll out a fix. He assured that the outage was not the result of a hack or a global cyberattack.
Microsoft confirmed CrowdStrike's explanation, stating that the underlying cause of the global outage had been fixed, but users may face the mandatory update's "residual" impact.
The outage affected airports and airlines in Australia, the UK, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Kenya, and the US.
Banks in these countries were also affected.
The United Arab Emirates said some of its attestation and banking systems were affected, while parliamentary computer systems in New Zealand were affected.
The US and Australia said their emergency response systems were also disrupted.