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Hundreds of businesses worldwide lost all working capabilities yesterday due to a Microsoft issue, and it is still ongoing.
The issue first occurred in Australia when the day began on July 19, as Windows users updated the cybersecurity on their computers. The same problem then spread around the world, with users in Asia, Europe, Africa, and then the Americas going down. At the core of the outage was Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity software company, who soon found that the root of the problem was because they had sent out a faulty update to Windows devices.
This issue showed how much modern-day businesses depend on Microsoft's technology, as the infamous blue screen of death affected everyone from travelers to big businesses to shoppers. Stores had to close down, airlines like American, Delta, and United canceled all flights, radios and TV channels went off-air, border crossings were slowed down, driver's license offices were closed, and hospital visits were stopped for the day, just to name a few. Some of Times Square's famed billboards even went dark due to the massive outage, with one expert even calling the incident "the largest IT outage in history."
To add onto the chaos, Crowdstrike stated that they may not have a widespread fix for a while, extending the wait for some customers into today. Many travelers are still stuck at airports after over 4,000 flights were canceled worldwide. However, they comfirmed that it was due to a faulty update, not any sort of cyberattack. They did implement a fix for some users, though, and some people tried rebooting their computers dozens of times to get the fix working. Others used a more complex fix that Crowdstrike posted on their website, but despite making the blue screen go away, many customers ended up with corrupted or deleted data.
Fact of the Day (Reader's Digest): Goats have accents. What a goat sounds like actually depends on the area they grow up in, just like humans.
Quote of the Day (Gracious Quotes): I have very high expectations of myself. I’m a very competitive person but competitive with myself. (Wentworth Miller)
Word of the Day (Merriam-Webster): Nonplus (verb)- To nonplus someone is to perplex them, or in other words, to cause them to be at a loss as to what to say, think, or do.
In a Sentence: The stranger's odd question about the town where my grandfather was born nonplussed me.
Great job getting us reader’s attention with this great article.
Oh no! Wow! Can not believe that this is happening in the world. 😯 Interesting article!