Microsoft crashes worldwide, causing problems for many companies

A global decline from the technology company Microsoft is causing problems for many companies, including those in the airline, financial, media and other industries. In the Basque Country, the failure has caused problems on the website of Osakidetza (digital appointments are not possible), Kutxabank and Laboral Kutxa or in the plant of Mercedes from Vitoria-Gasteiz, which has had to stop production.

The technology giant, through its incident account, Microsoft365 (@MSFT365Status) reported early this morning about “an issue” affecting “users’ ability to access various Microsoft applications and services.”

According to the report, an update problem at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has caused a storage and processing outage that has affected its services.

He later explained that traffic was being “redirected towards a healthy infrastructure” and that “an improvement” was already being noted.

A failure in the update of an antivirus, causing the crash

As he later clarified CrowdStrike a message in your X account, it has been a failure that can cause “a blue screen error” —commonly known as the “screen of death”— or “Falcon sensor-related bug check.” The latter is software designed to prevent cyberattacks on computer systems.

The company later issued another alert explaining that the update that caused the problem has now been identified and reverted. The tech company also shared a workaround for customers experiencing issues with its CrowdStrike service.

According to Igor Unanue, head of security at the company S21Sec, the solution seems “complicated” since it involves acting on each affected computer one by one.

The IT crash has had financial repercussions, as the Microsoft and CrowdStrike shares have started the session with sharp falls at the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.

A multitude of companies affected

In the Spanish State, Aena was one of the first to report, just after 8:00 a.m., that due to an incident in the computer system, “changes were occurring in the systems and in the airports in the network in Spain, which could cause delays.”

He then specified that the incident is affecting, above all, billing and passenger information points. Bilbao AirportFor example, long queues have formed due to the impossibility of carrying out the checking online (it was done by hand). There are already thirty delayed flights. Pamplona Airport has delayed, for the moment, only one flight.

The gas stations of Repsol They have also had problems, and users have to pay in cash.

In the Basque Country, the fall of Microsoft has fully affected platforms and websites dependent on it. Basque governmentas is the case of BizcayTIC, which provides IT support to local councils.

The Department of Governance, Digital Administration and Self-Government has insisted that the failure has not generated “any security problems”, but it has slowed down the systems. Thus, 7 out of 10 computers in the administration have been affected at first, although the system has been recovering and more than half of the devices were, at 11:00 hours, operating normally. The failure has also generated problems in the administration of Justice.

In Osakidetza It is not possible to make an appointment online. Thus, early in the morning there were queues in some clinics.

The financial sector has also been affected. Both the Spanish and London stock exchanges have had numerous trading problems. In the Basque Country, banks such as Kutxabank either Laboral Kutxa have suffered incidents, and for example, payment via Bizum has not been possible. Both entities have reported at 11:30 am that they are already operating normally.

However, the Redsys platform, which acts as an intermediary for a large part of card payments, has not been affected and claims that its service operates “completely normally.”

At the industrial level, the plant Mercedes In Vitoria-Gasteiz, production has had to be halted. Correos and Amazon have also had problems.