On Friday morning, the world experienced a global tech outage, with banks, airports, and airlines most affected by digital glitches. According to various media outlets, several major enterprises, including Sky News, airports, airline carriers, and the London Stock Exchange, saw some operations grind to a halt. Users took to social media to report ‘blue screens of death,’ indicating malfunctioning Windows laptops or workstations.
Budapest Liszt Ferenc Airport has also been affected by the global tech problems.
‘Due to a global IT failure, several airline check-in systems are down, resulting in flight delays, congestion, and significantly increased waiting times at Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport,’ Budapest Airport said in a statement. According to the company, the issue at Liszt Ferenc Airport is impacting flights operated by Eurowings, Ryanair, Turkish Airlines, and Wizz Air, with several airlines opting to manually check in passengers.
Budapest Airport advises departing passengers who have a boarding pass with a barcode or QR code, have checked baggage, or are travelling with hand baggage only, to enter Terminal 2A directly and proceed to the security checkpoint. To avoid further congestion, passengers are also asked to enter the terminal building unaccompanied.
Wizz Air has also issued a statement on the matter, informing the public that the airline’s website and mobile app, booking system, online check-in and boarding pass issuance, new bookings, changes to existing bookings, and contact and customer service centres are all unavailable. They added that airport check-in is free for all passengers during the outage.
After some investigation, it was revealed that the Windows crashes causing the problems
were linked to CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform, which defends against cyber attacks.
Microsoft acknowledged experiencing two unrelated issues: one related to its cloud platform Azure and another linked to CrowdStrike.
‘We are aware of an issue affecting a subset of customers,’ Microsoft said in a statement shared with POLITICO regarding Azure. Separately, it stated, ‘We are aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to a CrowdStrike update. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming.’
CrowdStrike said in a statement that it was ‘actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.’
‘This is not a security incident or cyberattack,’ the cybersecurity firm clarified. ‘The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.’
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