2024-07-19 20:56:33
On the 19th, the world was thrown into chaos by the cloud service failure of Microsoft (MS) in the United States. Some even called it the ‘worst information and communications technology (IT) blackout in history.’ Cyber disasters occurred all over the world, including in the United States, Australia, and Europe, and systems for airlines, media companies, banks, hospitals, and telecommunications companies were paralyzed.
●Global IT crisis
According to foreign news agencies such as Reuters, flights have been suspended at airports in the U.S., Australia, and Europe, and some broadcasters have even stopped broadcasting. There have also been disruptions in industries such as telecommunications, medical care, and finance. In the U.S., major airlines such as American Airlines and Delta Airlines have suspended takeoffs and delayed check-ins.
Flights were also canceled in Australia, and major broadcasters, mobile operators and banks were disrupted. Check-in delays at Berlin Airport in Germany, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and airports across Spain were also hit by ‘cyber disruptions’.
Major airlines such as Japan Airlines (JAL) and Germany’s Lufthansa have also decided to temporarily suspend operations. There have also been disruptions in airport operations at Hong Kong International Airport and Taiwan Taoyuan Airport. According to Cirium, a global travel data analysis company, more than 1,000 flights have been canceled worldwide so far.
There is a possibility that this incident will also affect the operation of the 2024 Paris Olympics. The Paris Olympic Organizing Committee announced on this day, “The system operation was affected. We are currently in the emergency plan.” However, they did not disclose what impact it had.
British broadcaster Sky News announced that live broadcasting was unavailable this morning. In addition, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in the UK also announced that some services were experiencing technical issues immediately after opening. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) was also affected. This caused problems with some hospital appointment and prescription systems in the UK, as well as the use of the NHS app. An emergency was also declared for the global aviation and logistics system.
JR West has suspended its service for checking train locations due to a website service failure. Some restaurants at Osaka theme park Universal Studios Japan (USJ) have stopped operating due to a payment management system failure.
In Korea, damage has occurred in the aviation industry, and the Ministry of Science and ICT is working with Microsoft and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) to determine the extent of the damage and its cause.
●Security updates and conflict causes
This disaster was attributed to a security update accident, not a cyberattack. It is said that a conflict occurred with the MS Windows system during the update process of the security platform ‘Falcon’ of CrowdStrike, the world’s number one security company in the US. CrowdStrike also acknowledged this. MS stated their official position, “We are taking action due to a service issue and are fully aware of the inconvenience some customers are experiencing,” and “We are doing our best to recover to resolve the issue quickly.”
To resolve this issue, a patch file that fixes the flaw is required. MS is said to be discussing the development of an emergency patch with CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike announced that “the large-scale Windows 10 Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) issue appears to be related to a new sensor update,” and “to resolve it, you need to log in to Safe Mode and delete the file causing the problem or change the folder name.”
Experts unanimously agreed that the accident was expected given the world’s dependence on a very small number of cloud services. Since major organizations and global companies in each country use large cloud service providers such as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the damage caused by the accident is also likely to spread on a global scale.
A senior executive at a domestic cybersecurity company emphasized, “Although there are not many places using CrowdStrike in Korea, it is the number one company in the global market, so most major global organizations and companies use it, which has led to significant damage,” and “In order to prevent this type of accident from happening again, we need to thoroughly implement a prior verification procedure when distributing security patch updates.”
Kim Seung-joo, a professor at Korea University’s Graduate School of Information Security, said, “If an accident occurs at a cloud company that we trusted, the damage will also be global in scale,” adding, “The way to reduce risk is to use two or three cloud services rather than relying on one cloud company.”
Reporter Jang Eun-ji [email protected]
Tokyo = Correspondent Lee Sang-hoon [email protected]
Beijing = Correspondent Kim Chul-jung [email protected]
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2024-07-19 20:56:33