TAG: GS 3: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
THE CONTEXT: On July 19, a faulty update from CrowdStrike disrupted several Windows computers and servers worldwide, causing significant outages across various sectors, including aviation, banking, telecommunications, and more.
EXPLANATION:
- This update was part of the Falcon endpoint threat detection and response product, which led to a widespread digital collapse.
Impact on Aviation
- Global and Domestic Disruptions
- The faulty update caused a major disruption in the aviation sector.
- In the United States, flights were briefly grounded as airports struggled with a complete collapse of their digital systems.
- The situation was similarly dire in India, where airlines had to resort to manual check-ins at major airports, including Bengaluru, Chennai, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, and Mumbai.
- Handwritten boarding passes were issued as flight information display boards were taken over by blue error screens.
- Flight Cancellations and Delays
- IndiGo reported the cancellation of at least 283 flights on Friday and Saturday due to the outage.
- Other airlines such as Akasa Air, SpiceJet, Vistara, Air India, and Air India Express did not provide specific details on their flight cancellations.
- Bangalore International Airport Ltd attributed the issues to downtime affecting the departure control system developed by Navitaire.
- Government Response
- Civil Aviation Minister urged airlines to accommodate affected passengers with food and water during the delays.
- The Union government’s eOffice suite for processing files and paperwork was also impacted for two hours, but the National Informatics Centre remained unaffected.
Technical Resolution
- Withdrawal and Fix of the Faulty Update
- CrowdStrike quickly withdrew the faulty update and issued a fix.
- However, network and IT administrators had to manually execute a four-step recovery process to repair the affected systems.
- This manual intervention was necessary because the systems needed to boot completely to download the fixed software.
- The Indian Computer Emergency Team (CERT-in) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology provided these steps in an advisory.
- Government and Corporate Efforts
- Minister for Electronics and Information Technology stated that the government was continuously engaging with Microsoft, and CERT-in was in communication with chief information security officers at various critical infrastructure entities.
- Efforts were underway to restore systems, with many being partially operational by evening.
- Maruti Suzuki and Financial Sector
- Maruti Suzuki India Ltd reported that their production and despatch operations were briefly halted but managed to fix the issue internally.
- The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) noted that only a few banks were using the CrowdStrike tool, and about 10 banks or non-banking financial institutions were impacted.
- The RBI assured that the overall Indian financial sector remained largely insulated from the global outage.
Broader Implications
- Airline executives warned that the disruption would have a cascading effect over subsequent days, as delayed flights would affect subsequent schedules.
- The extent of disruptions in India was not entirely clear by Friday evening.
- CrowdStrike CEO apologized for the disruptions and promised extended support to impacted customers.
- Microsoft also issued a statement affirming its active support for customers in their recovery efforts.
Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In)
- CERT-In is the national nodal agency under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
- It is responsible for responding to computer security incidents, handling cybersecurity emergencies, and issuing guidelines to prevent cyber threats.
- Its exemption from the RTI Act means that the public may no longer have direct access to seek information through the RTI route from CERT-In.
Crowdstrike Falcon
- Founded in 2011, the Texas-based Crowdstrike is a cloud-based cybersecurity platform used by a major share of the global tech market.
- More than half of Fortune 500 companies use their software known as Falcon to keep their systems safe from malware and cyberattacks, according to Crowdstrike.
Outage
- It is a period when a power supply or other service is not available or when equipment is closed down.
