Photo: Air travelers at Memphis International Airport’s Delta concourse wait for their flights during Friday’s CrowdStrike computer system issue. (Bob Bakken/desotocountynews.com)

July 20 – Most everyone was somehow affected by what some are calling the greatest cyber incident ever thanks to a glitch in an update.  

CrowdStrike, a cyber security company, pushed out an update to its Microsoft-based software early Friday morning. Airlines and businesses that use CrowdStrike were not greeted Friday morning with fresh, new, working software, however. Instead what many term the Blue Screen of Death indicated a Microsoft system error, was seen on screens worldwide as their systems were left inoperable.  

The problem was triggered by a “single content update” for its customers with Windows PCs, which happened only after it had been downloaded and installed on many clients’ machines.

Because of the update glitch, the Federal Aviation Administration early Friday morning ordered a complete groundstop of domestic flights which left travelers stranded for hours at airports or not flying at all on Friday.  

American Airlines was able to restart its flights within a few hours, but Delta and United were expecting delays and were issuing vouchers for travelers needing to make other travel plans.  

If you were expecting to fly on Friday but were not able to because of the CrowdStrike glitch, airlines say you can get a refund.

Businesses and financial institutions were also left with hardships as their systems, which use computer systems protected by CrowdStrike, were not able to transact business. Even convenience stores and gas stations could not accept credit or debit card transactions but had to go to cash only sales until the systems could be restored.  

A new fix was issued by CrowdStrike to its customers but systems had to be individually installed and updated to be sure they were working properly. Sometimes the installations took several attempts to work completely.  

CrowdStrike Friday issued a statement on what it called the Falcon Content Update for Windows Systems Hosts. The problem is tied only to Microsoft systems, Mac or other systems were not affected. The global impact comes, however, because of the popularity of Microsoft as a computer system, and CrowdStrike, with only 30,000 subscribers, has many major customers with a global reach.  

Transportation officials were expecting systems to be back up and functioning normally by today.