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Microsoft Blackout: INTIC Confirms Impact on Mozambique

Microsoft Blackout: INTIC Confirms Impact on Mozambique

This Friday (19), a global outage in Microsoft services is causing disruption in various sectors in Mozambique. The National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (INTIC) said that several national institutions have reported impacts resulting from the problem.

In an interview with DE, INTIC’s cyber incident response team stated that ‘we don’t have complete information yet, as the problem is ongoing’.

The organisation confirmed that some attacks had affected local institutions, but said it could not divulge specific details until it had a clearer picture of the locations affected. ‘We are carrying out a detailed survey and will soon provide a more comprehensive update,’ it concluded.

COTUR, the country’s main tour operator, also confirmed in a statement that it is facing difficulties due to the outage. The company’s statement reads: ‘Today, between 8am and 11am, COTUR’s booking system experienced very limited access due to the global computer failure, resulting in delays in processing requests. Although there are still some difficulties and slowdowns, access to the system is gradually normalising and the service is being restored.”

Fault resolved
A widespread fault in the Windows system affected several companies, airlines, banks and the media around the world this Friday morning. Microsoft, whose services were impacted by this problem with the software from cybersecurity company Crowdstrike, has indicated that the main cause of the problem has now been resolved, but that the residual impact of the cybersecurity blackouts continues to affect some Office365 applications and services.

Microsoft announced early this morning that it was taking ‘mitigation measures’, according to news agencies. The technology company also indicated that the faults started around 8am and that a problem with cloud services in the US had been resolved, while it was still investigating a fault that was having an impact on several of its applications and services.

At Sydney airport in Australia, aeroplanes are at a standstill and American airlines (United, Delta and American Airlines) are also not flying. In Berlin, Germany, the airport reported delays at check-in due to a ‘technical fault’ and, in Spain, there is talk of an ‘incident’ at all the country’s airports. Airports in Amsterdam and Japan also experienced flight disruptions. According to Microsoft, the cloud storage services of several low-cost airlines were affected, but have now been resolved.
The outages began in Australia, with media, banks and telecoms companies being affected. The government indicated that the problem seemed to lie with the cybersecurity company Crowdstrike.

The company admitted, in a statement sent out after 10.30am, that the problem originated from a ‘defect’ in its antivirus update. “Crowdstrike is actively working with customers affected by a defect found in a single content update for Windows. Mac and Linux were not affected.

This is not a security incident or a cyber-attack. The problem has been identified, isolated and a fix has been implemented. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide full and continuous updates on our website. We also recommend that organisations ensure that they are communicating with Crowdstrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of Crowdstrike’s customers,’ the statement reads in full.

As early as this morning, the company had a recorded message on its call centre stating that it was aware of the Windows faults and that they were related to the Falcon sensor. “Thank you for contacting the Crowdstrike support line. We are aware of Windows crashes… related to the Falcon sensor,’ says the message, quoted by Reuters.

See Also

The company produces an anti-virus that appears to be at the root of the problem. According to various crash logs, an update to this software was released which went horribly wrong – causing the so-called ‘blue screen of death’ on several computers.

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