Subscribe
From aviation to banking and all other services that use Microsoft’s cloud services, have been disrupted because of a ‘configuration change’ in the backend files of the popular cloud computing platform Azure.
The outage at Microsoft has left millions of eyeballs glaring at the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ as the blue Windows screen with the error image and sad smiley is popularly known to be.
This disruption has led to dozens of airlines including SpiceJet, Air India, Indigo, and Akasa announcing the suspension of web check in option for their passengers. Instead, the passengers are required to check in at the respective airports manually.
Also, flight operations at airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Berlin, Spain, Japan, Singapore, Melbourne (Australia) are also affected.
Apart from aviation, banking services have also taken a major hit across the world. Australia’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank has admitted that some of its customers are unable to transfer money owing to the Microsoft outage.
In the wake of the crisis, the Indian government has released an urgent advisory with the Union Minister for Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw assuring the concerned citizens that he is in regular contact with Microsoft’s top management.
As per the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a recent update of the cyber security software provider CrowdStrike’s product named Falcon Sensor has caused systems to crash.
As of now, the CERT-In has advised the users to revert the recent software update to make their systems work for the time being.
However, if systems continue to crash and cannot connect to the internet, CERT-In recommends the following steps to bypass the issue:
Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment.
Navigate to the directory C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike and locate the file matching the pattern “C-00000291*.sys”
Delete the identified file and reboot the system normally.
Meanwhile, in its formal acknowledgement of the outage, Microsoft has issued a statement mentioning that the underlying cause of the issue has been fixed. It informed that several Microsoft 365 apps and services have been restored to full functionality but some residues of the outage still need to be fixed.
“Residual impact is still affecting some Microsoft 365 apps and services, and Microsoft 365 engineering are continuing to conduct additional mitigation actions to provide relief,” Microsoft informed on its website.
“We’re continuing to observe an increase in functionality and availability for the remaining impacted scenarios and we're monitoring this closely to ensure we're progressing towards full recovery. Microsoft is continuing to treat this event with the highest possible priority,” the software giant added.