Source of IT outage 'identified' and 'fix deployed', cybersecurity company says

The source of the global IT outage has been "identified" and a "fix deployed", the head of US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike has said.

Banks, airlines, train companies, telecommunications companies, broadcasters and supermarkets have been affected.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue is "not a security incident or cyberattack" but is a "defect" in a "single content update for Windows hosts".

Microsoft IT outage: Follow live

"Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted," Mr Kurtz said.

"The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

CrowdStrike will provide "complete and continuous updates" on its website, Mr Kurtz added, referring customers to the "support portal for the latest updates".

Crowdstrike's "Falcon Sensor" software is allegedly causing Windows to crash and display a blue screen, according to an alert sent by Crowdstrike to its clients and seen by the Reuters news agency.

The alert, issued at 0530 GMT on Friday, reportedly included a manual workaround to rectify the issue.

CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 to "fix a fundamental problem", it says on its website: "Sophisticated attacks that were forcing the world's leading businesses into the headlines."

Such attacks could not be fixed with "existing malware-based defences", the company says.

Its approach combines the "most advanced endpoint protection with expert intelligence to pinpoint the adversaries perpetrating the attacks, not just the malware", the website says.

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