Global tech outage July 19.24 eases after widespread disruption + Omens

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Microsoft outage: Summary by Reuters

July 19, 2024 2:59 PM EDT Updated 14 min ago

• CrowdStrike software update triggers outages for Microsoft users

• Systems coming back online, delays affect range of industries

• Questions grow over whether cybersecurity is overly concentrated

• CrowdStrike shares plunge 12%, cybersecurity rivals gain

July 19 (Reuters) - Services from airlines to healthcare, shipping and finance were coming back online on Friday after a global digital outage disrupted computer systems for hours, laying bare the vulnerability created by the world's shift toward interconnected technologies following the COVID-19 pandemic.

After the outage was resolved, companies are now dealing with backlogs of delayed and canceled flights and medical appointments, missed orders and other issues that could take days to resolve. They also face questions about how to avoid future blackouts triggered by technology meant to safeguard their systems.

An earlier software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), opens new tab, one of the largest operators in the industry, triggered systems problems that grounded flights, opens new tab, forced broadcasters off air and left customers without access to services such as healthcare or banking.

Since the COVID pandemic broke out in 2020, governments and businesses have become increasingly dependent on a handful of interconnected technology companies over the past two decades, which explains why one software issue rippled far and wide.

The outage shone a spotlight on CrowdStrike, an $83 billion company that is not a household name but has more than 20,000 subscribers around the world including Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on social media platform X that a defect was found "in a single content update for Windows hosts" that affected Microsoft customers.

"We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our company," Kurtz told NBC News. "Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and it'll be operational."

CrowdStrike has one of the largest shares of the highly competitive cybersecurity market, leading some industry analysts to question whether control over such operationally critical software should remain with just a handful of companies.

The outage also raised concerns that many organizations are not well-prepared to implement contingency plans when a single point of failure such as an IT system, or a piece of software within it, goes down. But these outages will happen again, experts say, until more contingencies are built into networks and organisations introduce better back-ups.

"This event is a reminder of how complex and intertwined our global computing systems are and how vulnerable they are," said Gil Luria, senior software analyst at D.A. Davidson. Continue at
https://www.reuters.com/technology/global-cyber-outage-grounds-flights-hits-media-financial-telecoms-2024-07-19/

How could a security update cripple computers around the world?

The software that caused Friday's global IT outage was part of a routine update process.

Computers that received the faulty update now won’t operate without being started in a special recovery mode. That means each computer must be fixed manually. Continue at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/live-updates-it-outage-flights-banks-businesses-microsoft-crowdstrike-rcna162669

CrowdStrike history

CrowdStrike has been at the center of geopolitical storms in the past, entangled in everything from the 2016 DNC hack to CIA/NATO connections. The company has deep ties to the U.S. intelligence community and a penchant for stirring up international controversy. https://reinettesenumsfoghornexpress.substack.com/p/crowdstrike-and-its-cianato-connections

Omen #1

Was the July 19.24 outage a wake up call to unaware people to open their minds, to reconsider their relationship with electronic devices, to reconsider living in smart cities, buying smart homes, driving smart cars, keeping large amounts of money in banks?

Omen #2

I listened to a content rich interview with Yuval Noah Harari. No matter what your perception is of this historian, philosopher, supposed top consultant to World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab, please do not let that prevent you from listening to his view of current reality and threats from AI [Alien Intelligence] to man and our future. Excerpts:

I'm more worried about AI accumulating more and more power and basically taking over society, taking over our lives, taking power away from us until we don't understand what is happening and we lose control of our lives and future. The two most important things to realize about AI every person should know is:

First: AI is the first tool in history that can make decisions by itself. All previous tools in history couldn't make decisions. You invent an atom bomb. The atom bomb cannot decide to start a war, cannot decide which city to bomb. Autonomous weapon systems can decide, by themselves, who to kill, who to bomb.

Second: AI is the first tool in history that can create new ideas by itself. The printing press could print our ideas, but could not create new ideas. AI can create new ideas entirely by itself. This is unprecedented. AI is the first technology in history that instead of giving power to humans, it takes power away from us. And the danger is that it will increasingly take more and more power from us until we are left helpless and clueless about what is happening in the world.

This is already beginning to happen in an accelerated pace. More and more decisions about our lives, whether to give us a loan, a mortgage, a job are taken by AI. And more and more of the ideas, images, stories that surround us and shape our minds, our world are produced, are created by AI, not by human beings. More to follow.

Without prejudice and without recourse
Doreen Agostino
Our Greater Destiny Blog
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