SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A crippling cybersecurity outage brought down computer networks for businesses, governments, and airports across the globe Thursday night into Friday morning.
CrowdStrike, which services large corporations and government clients, was the company impacted. The defect was found in a single content update for Windows hosts and was not a security incident or cyberattack.
Here’s a look at how places in the Bay Area, including critical infrastructure and businesses, were impacted by the outage.
MORE: CrowdStrike says widespread disruptions were not the result of security incident or cyberattack
San Francisco International Airport
Passengers from across the globe were left stranded at the San Francisco International Airport, amid a software outage causing worldwide disruptions.
“I mean this is a mess,” Frank Desimone, a San Jose resident said.
“I get it, there’s technical issues but it’s very frustrating,” Andrew Martin, an Australian resident said.
The FAA says United, American, Delta, and Allegiant Airlines were all grounded overnight. Now, they’re slowly coming back online.
However, both Delta and United are warning passengers to expect disruptions throughout the day on Friday.
“So I get here 5:30 a.m., checked in, they checked all of my luggage and went to sit down, and about a half hour later they came on and said all flights canceled even though the plane is there sitting at the gate,” Desimone said.
Desimone drove up from San Jose early Friday morning. His 20-year-old daughter is in the hospital nearly 2,400 miles away in Honolulu, but he still couldn’t get rebooked on another flight until Saturday.
“It’s not fun and I’m going to have to talk to my daughter, it’s definitely a tough situation she’s in,” he said. “She’s going in for surgery so now I’m praying that they delay the surgery, maybe it won’t happen today.”
MORE: Flying amid CrowdStrike outage: What to expect next and tips to navigate travel chaos
Then there’s Andrew Martin here on a layover from Australia.
“I landed in San Fran at about 4:30 p.m. yesterday,” he said.
Forced to sleep here overnight, he’s been stuck for more than 12 hours as he waits to get rebooked.
“Yeah a little disappointed,” Martin said. “I would say it’s a long way from Australia to the U.S. to start with, which sucks, but I’m going to make the most of it.”
Despite long lines at every ticket counter, Everett Kelley managed to remain calm. He’s the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing 750,000 federal workers nationwide.
“It’s not pleasant, but I just ask people to be patient and consider the other person, right, consider that these employees, it’s easy to lash out at them but they had nothing to do with it,” Kelley said. “They couldn’t do anything so we have to be patient and just wait until they resolve the issue.”
Both Delta and United said they are working to issue travel waivers to help passengers change their travel plans.
While airlines are slowly recovering from outage problems, experts say getting things back to normal could take time.
“They got to sort through getting crews back to the right spot. They got to figure out where all their airplanes are. Get those to the right places. It’s just kind of untangling a complicated web,” said Sean Cudahy.
Cudahy is aviation reporter for travel website The Points Guy. He says if you’re flying out, he recommends getting to the airport early, checking in ahead of time and remembering to be patient.
“It’s been a busy day for the gate agents, the ticket agents. Yelling at them is not going to get you to your destination any faster.”
Other Bay Area airports
While San Francisco International had major problems with the I.T. outage, things were much better at the other Bay Area airports.
Multiple airlines experienced delays at San Jose Mineta International Airport, but only one flight was canceled and most of the delays were less than an hour.
There were also only a handful of delays and cancelations at Oakland International Airport.
Arriving flights were the most affected. Two incoming flights on Spirit and one on Delta Airlines were canceled.
Only three departing flights were affected by delays.
Oakland emergency services
Perhaps most concerning of all is the impact on emergency services.
The City of Oakland says it is aware of the cybersecurity outage affecting jurisdictions worldwide.
It issued a statement saying:
“The impacts in Oakland have caused many computers to become inaccessible and are being evaluated and responded to now.”
Oakland’s 911 call lines remain active and open to receive emergency calls from the community.
The city says people can continue to report emergencies by dialing 911.
East Bay city departments
When employees got to work Friday morning ready to take on criminal cases at the Alameda County Superior Court, there were issues due to the CrowdStrike outage.
When employees got to work Friday morning ready to take on criminal cases at the Alameda County Superior Court, there were issues.
“Our focus was to get the criminal side up and going because they have strict deadlines, and court hearings have to take place,” explains Paul Rosynsky, a public information officer at the Court.
Across the East Bay, city and county agencies were impacted in different ways.
Antioch Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe says it was spared any disruption because of new protocols in place following a previous ransomware attack.
“We usually now wait two weeks after an update, and that allows us the opportunity to ensure that the update is sound. In this instance, it wasn’t. And we were able to guard against that,” says Mayor Hernandez-Thorpe.
Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente issued a statement Friday morning on how it’s being affected by the global I.T. outage.
It says in part:
“In some situations, we have activated backup systems to support both continuous patient care and to secure access to medical records. All Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical offices remain open for care and service, and we are continuing to monitor our operations as we work to restore all affected systems.”
MORE: What is CrowdStrike, the company linked to the global outage?
Businesses lose systems amid outage, frustrating customers
The world’s reliance on technology was highlighted as the outage brought down systems.
People are not holding back on social media, posting about any frustration or inconvenience.
For instance, mobile ordering an early morning cup of Starbucks coffee was not possible.
The company responded to a number of posts on X, acknowledging the issue and apologizing.
But of course, impacts go far beyond cold brew.
Down Detector reported issues with VISA, Bank of America, Chase, and Wells Fargo, mainly surrounding their mobile apps.
Dr. Grant Kien with Cal State East Bay’s Communication Department says what’s astounding to most is realizing something so simple — an update, in this case — Could have such a profound ripple affect on our every day lives.
According to Kien, this is a reminder that technology fails. He says there are also many lessons to take from this — including beefing up back-ups.
San Francisco not highly affected by outage
Unlike many cities across the Bay Area, San Francisco was not highly impacted by the CrowdStrike outage.
Unlike many cities across the Bay Area, San Francisco was not highly impacted by the CrowdStrike outage.
“Emergency management, public safety, public health, and other critical city operations remained unaffected,” said Mike Makstman, executive director for the Department of Technology and the city’s chief information officer.
Makstman said the majority of the city and county of San Francisco’s IT systems do not utilize this software.
The outage did impact many companies throughout the city.
“A lot of IT infrastructure has crashed,” said John Hammond, former DoD Cyber operator and principal security researcher at Huntress.
Hammond said many IT experts could be busy for days.
“All these computers that are now stuck in that blue screen and frowny face – well, that is something that they will need to really manually go fix. It’s not something that we can automate or push out a solution in mass,” said Hammond. “A lot of the engineers or technicians will probably spend today and the weekend.”
With threats of earthquakes hitting this region, the city’s tech department viewed today as an opportunity to grow.
“We have been investing for many years now. We have been preparing for an earthquake, we learned a lot from our COVID response, and now more than ever technology is so critical to city operations. We are paying a lot of attention and working very closely with all department IT teams to make sure they are prepared to continue operations. Even when technology is not available to us,” said Mike Makstman.
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