The situation, particularly in airports, returned to normal on Saturday 20 July after the massive computer failure which caused chaos in transport, the media and financial markets and put workers around the world on technical unemployment.
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In FranceRoissy and Orly airports, the two main entry points for foreign delegations of Olympic Games Paris, which begins on Friday, are particularly scrutinized. The situation has returned to normal in all airports in France “, posted the French Minister Delegate for Transport Patrice Vergriete on social networks on Saturday.
After temporarily disrupting the IT operations of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, including the accreditation system, but not ticketing, activities ” have resumed normally ” Friday afternoon, according to organizers. “ The Paris 2024 computer system has not collapsed a priori, so if there are a few malfunctions here and there, it’s a lesser evil. “, estimated a leader of the French sports movement to the AFP.
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More generally, the situation is clearing up in the world skies. Many Asian airports reported activity from Friday evening local time onwards: normal ” Or “ almost normal “, especially in South Koreain Singapore, in New Zealand, in Hong Kong or in the Philippines. In Australiaa few “ residual problems » causing delays persist however in Sydney and « five flights » operated by the low-cost airline Jetstar in Japan were disrupted on Saturday.
Berlin International Airport worst hit in Germanyis operating almost normally again, although some travelers are still unable to use the self-check-in machines, an airport spokesperson told Agence France-Presse.
“ Flights have resumed across the country but some congestion persists “, a government official stressed to the press. Some 1,500 connections remained cancelled on Saturday at midday at UNITED STATES.
Emergency services in at least three US states were affected on Friday. Some 3,400 flights were canceled across the country on Friday, according to Flightaware.com, making it the worst day for air traffic in the US this year.
“ 8.5 million computers affected »
The cause: a faulty update, on Microsoft Windows operating systems, of an IT solution from the American cybersecurity group CrowdStrike, which rules out a cyberattack or an IT security problem. I want to personally apologize to all organizations, groups and individuals who have been affected. “, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz told CNBC on Friday.
In a blog post on Saturday, CrowdStrike explained that it had released an update for Windows on Thursday night that caused “ a system crash and a blue screen ” This update was fixed after 78 minutes, the company said, publishing remediation advice on its blog, which Microsoft recommends its customers to ” follow “.
“We understand how this issue occurred and are conducting a thorough root cause analysis,” CrowdStrike also wrote. “We will update our findings (…) as the investigation progresses.” Some “8,5 million computers, or less than 1% of all Windows machines ” have been affected, Microsoft said Saturday. The computer giant said it has deployed ” hundreds of engineers and experts » to help affected organizations.
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A “ Cardiac arrest in the automotive industry supply chain “, according to Elon Musk
Another consequence of this breakdown: hackers are trying to take advantage of the chaos by sending fraudulent messages to seize personal data, according to German, British and Australian services responsible for electronic security.
” This is one of the rare times that security software has been found to be the cause of such a massive outage. “, commented Kayssar Daher, a cybersecurity expert interviewed by AFP. The scale of the phenomenon can be explained, according to him, by the fact that ” Windows is extremely popular, and so is CrowdStrike “.
According to Tesla’s boss, Elon Muskthe breakdown has ” caused cardiac arrest in the automotive industry supply chain “Several hospitals in the Netherlands as well as television channels in France, such as TF1, or in Australia, were also affected, leading to the closure of an emergency department and the postponement of operations.
Global stock markets fell on Friday, worried by the outage that prevented the London and Milan indices from showing their rate of change for much of the day. In New York, CrowdStrike ended down 11.10% and Microsoft down 0.74%.
CrowdStrike relies heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (machine learning) and notably offers a digital protection platform called Falcon.