Canceled non-urgent surgeries, procedures and medical visits at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, postponed cases in the Massachusetts court system and delayed in-person services at Registry of Motor Vehicles locations were among impacts area residents experienced as the result of a worldwide software outage Friday morning.
While the widespread technology outage was also disrupting flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the globe, area cities and towns were noting minimal issues with their municipal services, though cautioned people that some online information might not be readily available.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack — and that a fix was on the way. The company said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
But hours after the problem was first detected, the disarray continued — and escalated.
Adam Bagni, director of external communications for Mass General Brigham, issued a statement on behalf of the hospital system, which includes the Northampton hospital.
“Due to the severity of the issue, all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures and medical visits are canceled today,” the statement reads. “Mass General Brigham remains open to provide care to patients with urgent health concerns in our clinics and emergency departments, and we continue to care for all patients currently receiving care in our hospitals.”
Baystate Health, though, which operates Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Baystate Health & Wellness Center in Northampton and Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, was mostly unaffected by the outage.
“Fortunately, Baystate Health is not experiencing significant disruptions at this time, and we continue to safely provide services and deliver care,” said Heather Duggan, Baystate Health’s manager of public relations.
At Hampshire Superior Court in Northampton, Clerk of Courts Harry Jekanowski said computers were not working and attempts to reboot them were failing.
“Operations are at a standstill,” Jekanowski said on Friday morning.
No trial is currently underway, and the caseload was minimal. “It’s lucky we don’t have a trial,” Jekanowski said.
But other courthouses in busier jurisdictions had to put off trials and cases, and in Northampton matters couldn’t be docketed and cases couldn’t be e-filed.
“Like many organizations, the Massachusetts judiciary has been impacted by technical issues in some areas of operation as of Friday morning. About half of staff workstations were impacted by the outage and are in the process of being restored,” Jennifer Donahue, the public information officer for the state Supreme Judicial Court, said in a statement. “In addition, the Trial Court’s transcript recording system, For The Record (FTR) is not operating in a number of courthouses, which is causing a delay in some court sessions. The Trial Court’s case management system and public portals, MassCourts.org, are fully functional.”
The Registry of Motor Vehicles was set to open midday, after canceling customer service center appointments before noon, due to many workstations at centers not being operational, though road test appointments were being held, even as no vehicle inspections could occur.
Despite what is happening, a Northampton city spokesperson, speaking for Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, said that all systems were functioning for Northampton residents, that the city doesn’t use CloudStrike. And while Northampton does use some pieces of Azure, those appeared to be unaffected.
Amherst issued an alert of its own that services may be impacted by a global technology service outage, encouraging residents to call ahead before attempting to access services at municipal buildings. “Many of our systems are operational, but we are not able to access all features,” Communications Manager Samantha Giffen wrote in an email.
The Amherst Police and Fire departments and Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Service continued to answer and respond to 911 calls for all emergencies, even with the other technology outages.
Local banks didn’t appear to be affected. “So far, we’re OK,” said Matthew Bannister, head of marketing and corporate responsibility for PeoplesBank. “Our main retail or business/commercial accounts have not been impacted at all.”
On the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Gov. Maura Healey wrote, “I’m closely monitoring the global CrowdStrike incident, and our team is working to assess and mitigate the impact on Massachusetts. We’re in contact with public safety, health care, and transportation officials, but residents may experience delays while we resolve the outage.”
The most serious problems appeared to be at airports, with long lines forming in the United States, Europe and Asia as airlines lost access to check-in and booking services at a time when many travelers are heading away on summer vacations.
News outlets in Australia — where telecommunications were severely affected — were pushed off air for hours, while banks in South Africa and New Zealand reported outages to their payment system or websites and apps.
At Hong Kong’s airport, Yvonne Lee, 24, said she only found out her flight to Phuket in Thailand was postponed to Saturday when she arrived at the airport, saying the way it was handled would “affect the image of Hong Kong’s airport very much.”
Her already short five-day trip would now have to be further shortened, she said.
Some athletes and spectators descending on Paris ahead of the Olympics were delayed as was the arrival of their uniforms and accreditations, but Games organizers said disruptions were limited and didn’t affect ticketing or the torch relay.
“This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, a professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and former Head of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre.
DownDetector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected — although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services.
Cyber expert James Bore said real harm would be caused by the outage because systems we’ve come to rely on at critical times are not going to be available. Hospitals, for example, will struggle to sort out appointments and those who need care may not get it.
“There are going to be deaths because of this. It’s inevitable,’’ Bore said. “We’ve got so many systems tied up with this.”
Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
CrowdStrike said in an emailed statement that the company “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”
It said: “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
The Austin, Texas-based company’s Nasdaq-traded shares were down nearly 15% in premarket trading early Friday.
A recording playing on its customer service line said, “CrowdStrike is aware of the reports of crashes on Microsoft ports related to the Falcon sensor,” referring to one of its products used to block online attacks.
Meanwhile, governments, officials and companies across the world scrambled to respond.
New Zealand’s acting prime minister, David Seymour, said on X that officials in the country were “moving at pace to understand the potential impacts,” adding that he had no information indicating it was a cybersecurity threat.
The issue was causing “inconvenience” for the public and businesses, he added.
On the Milan stock exchange, the FTSE MIB index of blue-chip Italian stocks could not be compiled for an hour, though trading continued.
Major delays reported at airports grew on Friday morning, with most attributing the problems in booking systems of individual airlines.
In the U.S., the FAA said the airlines United, American, Delta and Allegiant had all been grounded.
Airlines and railways in the U.K. were also affected, with longer than usual waiting times.
In Germany, Berlin-Brandenburg Airport halted flights for several hours due to difficulties in checking in passengers, while landings at Zurich airport were suspended and flights in Hungary, Italy and Turkey disrupted.
The Dutch carrier KLM said it had been “forced to suspend most” of its operations.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport warned that the outage was having a “major impact on flights” to and from the busy European hub. The chaotic morning coincided with one of the busiest days of the year for Schiphol.
Widespread problems were reported at Australian airports, where lines grew and some passengers were stranded as online check-in services and self-service booths were disabled — although flights were still operating.
In India, Hong Kong and Thailand, many airlines were forced to manually check in passengers. An airline in Kenya was also reporting disruption.
Australia bears brunt of outages in Asia
While the outages were being experienced worldwide, Australia appeared to be severely affected by the issue. Disruption reported on the site DownDetector included the banks NAB, Commonwealth and Bendigo, and the airlines Virgin Australia and Qantas, as well as internet and phone providers such as Telstra.
National news outlets — including public broadcaster ABC and Sky News Australia — were unable to broadcast on their TV and radio channels for hours. Some news anchors went on air online from dark offices, in front of computers showing “blue screens of death.”
Hospitals in several countries also reported problems.
Britain’s National Health Service said the outage caused problems at most doctors’ offices across England. NHS England said in a statement said the glitch was affecting the appointment and patient record system used across the public health system.
Some hospitals in northern Germany canceled all elective surgery scheduled for Friday, but emergency care was unaffected.
Israel said its hospitals and post office operations were disrupted.
In South Africa, at least one major bank said it was experiencing nationwide service disruptions as customers reported they were unable to make payments using their bank cards in stores. The New Zealand banks ASB and Kiwibank said their services were down as well.
Shipping was disrupted too: A major container hub in the Baltic port of Gdansk, Poland, the Baltic Hub, said it was battling problems resulting from the global system outage.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
