Canadians weren’t spared the headaches of cancelled flights, delayed medical appointments and other problems caused by a failed cybersecurity software upgrade that caused a host of cascading issues around the globe on Friday.
According to an alert sent by the global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, the company’s Falcon Sensor software caused Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the “blue screen of death.”
The problem crashed Windows machines and servers, sending them into a loop of recovery so that they couldn’t restart.
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“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” company CEO George Kurtz said in a message posted on social media.
“Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
David Shipley, CEO of cybersecurity firm Beauceron Security, said a majority of the world’s computers use Windows systems, and that is a vulnerability that Canada and other governments should think about addressing.
“Maybe we need to have a deep conversation about where government’s role is in regulating tech companies to make sure all of our eggs — in every single critical industry — are not concentrated in so few companies,” Shipley told CBC News.
Disruptions hit health services
Canadian airlines, business, government agencies, hospitals and media outlets — including CBC — suffered the effects of the outage, which began overnight.
David Shipley, CEO of Beauceron Security, a New Brunswick-based cybersecurity software firm, says Canadians frustrated by the CrowdStrike outage should ‘get mad’ and make sure federal party leaders know about their frustration to mitigate future incidences.
British Columbia health authorities say the disruption affected its networks and computers across all systems. Adrian Dix, the province’s health minister, said that the tech issues left hospital workers “briefly” using pen and paper to do some tasks on Friday.
Hospitals in the Ontario cities of Toronto and Hamilton also dealt with some issues related to the outage, which affected the availability of some health-care services in Newfoundland and Labrador as well.
Domestic, international airlines affected
Airports across Canada advised customers to check with airlines about flight status before leaving home Friday.
Toronto-based Porter Airlines said all flights would be cancelled until at least 3 p.m. ET. The airline reported being in the “early stages” of restoring normal services by Friday afternoon.
Porter customer Jennifer Quintyne told CBC News that she was supposed to be headed east with her son to visit family, but instead found herself “vacationing at the airport.”
The flight issues caused serious consequences in some cases.
For Mark Rutherford, a cancelled flight from Halifax to Montreal left him unable to attend a pending funeral for two relatives.
“It would have been nice to be there and it’s not happening now,” Rutherford, who booked his flight with Porter, told CBC’s Canada Tonight.
He said an alternate flight with another airline was too expensive for him to consider.
Other Canadian airlines did not appear to be affected, Toronto’s Pearson airport said in a statement.
Many travellers are scrambling to find alternative routes, after Porter Airlines cancelled flights on Friday due to the global outage of CrowdStrike cybersecurity software. CBC’s Chris Glover speaks to those in Toronto affected by the cancellations.
In the U.S., American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Spirit Airlines and Allegiant Air had all their flights grounded for varying lengths of time. Airlines said the outage affected many systems, including those used to check in passengers, calculate aircraft weight and communicate with crews in the air.
By early evening on the East Coast, nearly 2,800 U.S. flights had been cancelled and almost 10,000 others were delayed, according to tracking platform FlightAware. Worldwide, about 4,400 flights were cancelled.
Traffic delays at points of entry on land between Canada and the U.S. were also reported — including at the bridge and tunnel crossings between Windsor, Ont., and Detroit on Friday.
The Canada Border Services Agency said it experienced a partial systems outage of its telephone reporting system that was later resolved.
Airports globally are facing issues caused by a CrowdStrike update that caused Windows systems to crash. In Fredericton, the issue has delayed several Porter flights.