Microsoft Server Down: Windows operating system's antivirus became a virus, chaos all over the world; know everything

The technical glitch in the upgrade of Microsoft's computer software created havoc all around the globe. All of a sudden, millions of computers stopped working due to which thousands of flights were cancelled or delayed. The banking system was shocked, health services were affected, media had to stop its broadcast, and worries surrounded the business world. In America only, the 911 services were disrupted. After 17 hours of trouble, at about 10 pm Friday night, Microsoft declared the fix for the problem.

It then happened with computers using the Windows operating system of the world's biggest software company Microsoft. Really, the problem came into those computers that were using Microsoft's cloud service, which had CrowdStrike's firewall system. Aviation services in India have been badly affected; many flights had to be canceled. Online check-in services of all airlines like Indigo, SpiceJet, Akasa, Air India, and Vistara were disrupted. There were long queues at check-in counters at airports.

Microsoft said industries around the world use this security software developed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to protect their respective networks from hackers and other external interference. According to them, CrowdStrike was updating this security software and it was due to a technical flaw in this update; this situation arouse. We are supporting Customers through the portal for the latest updates and will continue that to provide complete and continuous updates on our website—CrowdStrike Chief Executive Officer George Kurtz said.

Union Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said that the government is in constant touch with Microsoft. This outage will have no effect on the banking, payment and market system of our country. Our NIC network is not affected by this. At the same time, RBI also said that there are very few banks whose important computer system is on the cloud, so this global glitch did not affect them. The RBI, however, said that functioning of 10 banks and non-banking financial companies would get minor impact.

According to Flight Aware, more than 33,139 flights were delayed on Friday across the world, while about 3,750 flights were canceled. In the US, the maximum number of 788 flights of Delta Airlines were canceled. Whereas, a maximum number of 155 flights were canceled at Atlanta Airport.

• In India, 200 flights of Indigo were canceled. 110 flights of Air India were delayed and three were cancelled. 45 flights of Akasa were delayed and 2 were cancelled. 86 flights of SpiceJet were delayed and 17 were cancelled.
• 27 flights were cancelled at Delhi's Indira Gandhi Airport, while 247 were delayed. 168 flights were delayed at Mumbai airport, while six were cancelled.
• All the work that was done on computers at airports had to be done manually. It was taking more than half an hour for aviation personnel to check in and issue boarding passes.

Friday's incident is an example of the effects of heavy dependence on select software on the world economy. Banking and health services were also affected in dozens of countries including America and Europe. Along with Microsoft, Google and Amazon are big companies providing servers and cloud services. Most countries and companies are dependent on them.