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Science & Tech.
Mahesh

21/07/24 12:50 PM IST

Windows outage

In News
  • A major disruption in Microsoft Corp’s cloud services caused service disruptions to a number of businesses around the world, including in India.
Causes of the outage
  • Microsoft said that a preliminary cause for the disruption was a configuration change  “in a portion of [its] Azure backend workloads”, which resulted in connectivity failures that affected Microsoft 365 services dependent on these connections. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.
  • At the heart of the issue was a software update issued by US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike for Windows systems, which ended up malfunctioning and caused system downtimes.
  • The issue was specific to Falcon, one of the company’s main software products, which is deeply embedded with the Windows operating system.
  • Major corporations across the world use software developed by CrowdStrike, which is why all their systems faced the outage at the same time.
  • In cybersecurity parlance, Falcon is described as  “endpoint detection and response” (EDR) software.
  • It is a complex software, but its basic job is to monitor activity on computers on which it is installed, and constantly scan them for any potential threats such as malware.
  • All major businesses around the world, including several Fortune 500 companies, are understood to use the service.
  • To carry out its job, Falcon first gets access to deep details of a system.
  • This includes, among other things, the communications that computers are sending over the internet, what programs they are running, and the files that are being opened.
  • In that sense, Falcon is a ‘privileged software’ given its deep rooted integration at the operating system level.
  • Since a number of businesses use systems which run on Windows, Falcon is deeply embedded within those systems — this was the major reason why a faulty code in the Falcon update primarily impacted Windows PCs.
Impact in India
  • In India, the impact of the outage was most pronounced in the aviation sector.
  • Hundreds of flights were delayed, and several cancelled, as airline operators found their systems inoperational, forcing them to switch to manual processes.
  • Indigo said that its systems “across the network” were impacted by the issue with Microsoft Azure, “which has resulted in increased wait times at our contact centres and airports”.
  • Akasa Air temporarily suspended online services, like booking and check-in, and reverted to manual operations.
  • Air India Express said the outage had impacted its airport operations, as well those of multiple airlines and airports globally. Spicejet said that it was facing “a technical issue in providing updates on flight disruptions”.
  • The Ministry of Civil Aviation, in collaboration with the Airports Authority of India, implemented manual backup systems to maintain operational continuity. Extra staff was deployed to assist passengers, and address their concerns.
  • Major US carriers like Delta, United, and American Airlines had flights grounded by authorities. Airlines in Europe and the Asia-Pacific also reported disruptions.
  • In India, at least ten banks and NBFCs faced minor disruptions, which have either been resolved or are being resolved, the Reserve Bank of India said. It added that overall, the financial sector in India remained insulated from the global outage since critical systems of most banks were not in the cloud, and only a few banks are using the CrowdStrike tool.
Source- Indian Express

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