Featured Image Credit: Marc Piasecki/Getty Images / Omer Taha Cetin/Anadolu via Getty Images
Topics: Microsoft, Technology, Business, Elon Musk, Social Media
Emily Brown
Topics: Microsoft, Technology, Business, Elon Musk, Social Media
Microsoft is in the midst of a major outage which has caused widespread disruption - and Elon Musk is absolutely loving it.
The outage is reported to have started at 6pm ET yesterday (July 18) as business and institutions suddenly found themselves offline due to the issue which has been linked to Windows workstations.
Everything from banks and supermarkets to airlines and rail services have been impacted by the outage, which has been linked to the security firm Crowdstrike after it issued a software update just hours earlier.
Advert
In a statement, Crowdstrike's CEO, George Kurtz, assured the outage was 'not a security incident or cyberattack'.
"Crowdstrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts," he said.
"Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted [...] The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."
Crowdstrike has referred customers to its support portal for latest updates, adding: "[We] will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.
“Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft said it was aware of the issue affecting Windows devices 'due to an update from a third party software platform'.
"We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming," it said.
While Crowdstrike is dealing with the matter, Musk has been having a field day with the issue after he previously called out Microsoft in 2021.
At the time, Musk wrote on X: "Macrohard >> Microsoft."
He did follow up with the admission that Microsoft Teams is 'pretty good', but after the recent outage Musk harked back to his initial criticism.
The Tesla founder took the time to dig out his post from 2021 and retweeted it to bring it back on to people's timelines, simply adding "…" as an indication that his comment stood the test of time.
Musk's fans have been loving the dig, with his post having wracked up more than 52,000 likes at the time of writing (July 19).
Crowdstrike, which describes itself as a 'global cybersecurity leader', works with some of the world's biggest companies to help stop internet breaches or hacks.
Delta, United and American Airlines are among the companies affected by the outage, prompting them to ground all flights regardless of their destination, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
At least 600 flights have already been canceled as a result of the outage.