SINGAPORE - Millions of computers across the world crashed on Friday (July 19) in a major technology outage, disrupting essential services including those of banks, airlines, railways, media companies and supermarkets.

From grounded flights and delays at airports and railway stations to the temporary closure of supermarkets because payment tills were down, the disruption stemmed from American cyber-security firm CrowdStrike's defective software update for Microsoft Windows computers.

The problem was first reported in Australia after the software updates were pushed out, causing computer users to see a dreaded "blue screen of death".

Experts said it could take days before everything is back to normal, as the computers have to be fixed manually and not through remote updates.

Singapore was not spared. Computer users here first reported the blue screens at around noon.

At Changi Airport, check-in processes for more than 10 carriers, including Singapore Airlines' budget arm Scoot as well as Jetstar, AirAsia and Cebu Pacific Air, had to be handled manually.

These included the issuance of boarding passes. The disruption also delayed a number of departing flights and resulted in long queues and chaos at Changi Airport.

SingPost said that its mail and parcel tracking system was also hit.

The outage also affected some carparks, which had to keep their barrier arms lifted to allow motorists to enter and exit.

Operations at The Straits Times newsroom were also briefly affected.

Some businesses and investors also had problems accessing the Singapore Exchange's post trade system on July 19.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said that other critical trading and clearing services, however, were not affected.

Major financial institutions also reported no or limited impact on customers and their key operations, said an MAS spokeswoman.

"Some experienced disruptions to internal-facing systems used by staff, but in all cases, critical systems were unaffected," she added.

Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo said in a Facebook post: "What we know now is that this is not a cyber-security incident but a technical issue with the software of Microsoft and CrowdStrike."

She said that while essential services provided by the Government, local banks, telecommunications and hospitals still continued, some organisations here experienced disruptions, which "undoubtedly caused inconvenience to their users".

To help them recover, she said, the Singapore Cyber Emergency Response Team quickly issued an advisory outlining steps for administrators and users of affected systems to mitigate the impact.

"Our ministry is closely monitoring the situation and will provide assistance when needed."

In a post on X, CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz said: "CrowdStrike is 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 cyber attack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed," he added.

He also told NBC News that the company is "deeply sorry" for the impact that it had caused to customers, travellers and anyone affected by this.

"Many of the customers are rebooting the system, and it's coming up, and it'll be operational," Mr Kurtz said. "It could be some time for some systems that won't automatically recover," he said, adding that the firm "would make sure every customer is fully recovered".

Founded in 2011, the company focuses on government clients and critical services sectors such as airports and banks.

Mr Scott Jarkoff, former CrowdStrike regional director of threat intelligence strategy, told ST that a blue screen signals a system crash. Thus, an affected device cannot receive an update remotely. "A lot of tech teams are going to have a busy weekend," he said.

Said Mr Jake Moore, global security adviser at Slovakia-based cyber-security specialist ESET: "The inconvenience caused by the loss of access to services for thousands of people serves as a reminder of our dependence on Big Tech such as Microsoft in running our daily lives and businesses."

In February 2023, failure at Azure caused widespread disruption in Asia that lasted 18 hours.

A utility power surge in South-east Asia that tripped some cooling units in Microsoft's own data centre in an undisclosed location in the region affected customers including the Central Provident Fund Board, transit card issuer EZ-Link, the Esplanade and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

In April 2023, a fire in a Global Switch data centre in Paris brought down Google Cloud services in Europe for weeks for some customers. A cooling system water pump failure reportedly caused water to leak into the battery room, which sparked the fire. Several French government websites and services, including the Lyon airport website, went offline.

In June 2023, an outage at Amazon Web Services left the websites of The Boston Globe, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Southwest Airlines, among others, inaccessible for hours.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.

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