Dozens of Canadian flights and several hospitals across the country were disrupted on Friday amid a global technology outage that has grounded planes and impacted banks as well as other businesses across the world.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said on Friday that the problem occurred after a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows and the issue was being resolved.
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” the U.S. based-firm said in a statement on its website.
“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” it added.
“We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.”
CrowdStrike said Mac and Linux hosts have not been affected.
The company offers cybersecurity services to thousands of clients across the globe.
As of 12:30 p.m. ET, roughly 100 flights that were scheduled to depart Canada were cancelled, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company. This does not include inbound flights to Canada.
More than half of the flights (56) scrapped Friday were from Toronto-based Porter Airlines, which said it had cancelled all flights until 3 p.m. ET.
“Passengers cannot be rebooked while systems are offline,” Porter Airlines said in a statement.
Meanwhile, there were at least five Air Canada flights, 11 WestJet flights and two from Flair Airlines cancelled by Friday noon, according to Cirium.
Toronto Pearson International Airport said the third-party IT outage was continuing to affect some airlines.
“Travellers may notice the terminals are busier than normal this morning as we anticipate connecting 135,000 passengers today,” it said in a post on X.
A spokesperson for the Calgary Airport Authority told Global News that they were “expecting some delays and cancellations” at YYC because of the global outage, but so far there has been “minimal impact.”
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Some flights to and from the Vancouver International Airport were also affected, the airport said.
Air Canada told Global News in an emailed statement that there was no “major impact” on its operations and it is monitoring the situation closely.
NAV Canada, the country’s air navigation service providers, said its systems were not affected.
“We are working closely with our industry partners to understand how we can best support their operations and passengers,” it said on X.
Passengers are pictures travelling through Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on July 19, 2024.
Rob Ford/Global News
Calgary-based WestJet released a statement saying it was expecting some delays across its network amid the global disruption.
“At this time, there has been no direct impact to WestJet’s IT systems or operations and any flight cancellations across our network are unrelated to the CrowdStrike outage,” WestJet said.
DownDectector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected — although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services.
Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
Banks, hospitals and media hit
The outage has also impacted banks, hospitals, mail deliveries and media outlets in different countries.
Several health services in Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador were impacted on Friday.
The Canadian Press said the CrowdStrike Windows outage had earlier disrupted some of its services, including wire content and all audio and photo delivery, before they were restored.
On Friday, news outlets in Australia — where telecommunications were severely affected — were pushed off air for hours.
Banks in South Africa and New Zealand reported outages to their payment system or websites and apps.
The Canadian Banking Association said “any current impact on banking services would be temporary.”
“Like many other companies, banks in Canada are reviewing the situation based on updates from their technology partners,” spokesperson Maggie Cheung told Global News.
“Canadians can be reassured that our country has a well-protected banking system.”
Meanwhile, a Canada Post spokesperson told Global News that “a small number of post offices across the country appear to be impacted.”
“We are assessing the situation across our network, but the impact for customers appears to be minimal at this time,” the spokesperson said.
How did the outage happen?
CrowdStrike is one of the world’s largest cybersecurity firms, which develops software to help companies detect and prevent hacks.
CrowdStrike said that there was an issue with a Falcon Sensor software update which led to a bug check or blue screen error on Windows hosts.
“This is the result of software being deployed that had not been perhaps sufficiently tested and creating a problem,” said Jennifer Quaid, executive director of the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange, in an interview with Global News.
Kwasi Boakye-Boateng, research team lead at the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity, said such software bugs are quite common, but the scale of the disruption is not.
“It’s actually gained a lot of traction because of the fact that CrowdStrike has a lot of clients,” he told Global News in an interview.
Quaid said businesses are vulnerable because they are 100 per cent dependent on systems, which are completely interrelated and connected to each other.
— with files from Global News’ Craig Lord, Nathaniel Dove, Kathryn Mannie, Katie Dangerfield and The Associated Press