IT outages caused by a cybersecurity bug on Friday caused chaos around the world, affecting hospitals, banks, airlines and public transport. The bug was the result of a Microsoft Windows update, which security consultant Dmitri Alperovitch stated had resulted in the “largest IT outage in history”. The Daily Mirror called it “the day the world stood still”. Some 4,300 flights were cancelled and 30,000 delayed across the busiest holiday weekend. Financial services workers were among those left unable to access their computers, whilst the incident was expected to take days to fix, potentially costing billions of pounds.
The cybersecurity company CrowdStrike was carrying out the update when the bug occurred, whilst some television channels also went off air. The Daily Mail argued that the event showed the limitations of cashless payments. Almost half of Britons now only carry their phones for payment, yet those without cash were left unable to purchase food because of issues at supermarket checkouts. The Daily Express noted that the incident may lead to many billions in costs.
The travel industry was hit particularly hard. Some 200,000 people are expected to have been impacted, with many unlikely to have any success in claiming back associated costs from their insurers. The Times reported that a Cobra emergency committee was meeting to discuss ways of lessening the impact of the outage. It also featured a story on the imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia for 16 years on politically-motivated espionage charges
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