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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Business
Helen Livingstone

‘Computer says no’: what the papers say after IT outage causes global chaos

United States George Mann CrowdStrike El Pais (Organization) Microsoft United Kingdom Daily Express Daily Mail the Daily Telegraph the Financial Times
Composite of UK newspaper front pages on 20 July 2024
Composite of UK newspaper front pages on 20 July 2024. Composite: The Daily Telegraph/Daily Mirror/The Times/Daily Express/Daily Mail/FT Weekend/i weekend

Saturday’s headlines are dominated by the fallout from an IT failure that grounded planes, took TV channels off air and played havoc with health services, banking and retail businesses around the world.

The outage was the result of a botched software upgrade by US firm CrowdStrike that hit Microsoft’s Windows operating systems and left workers with a “blue screen of death” as their computers failed to start.

“Recovery from global IT failure ‘could take weeks’,” the Guardian said, adding that airlines, healthcare and retailers were “in chaos after software upgrade glitch”.

The Daily Telegraph splashed on “Holidays in chaos after global IT meltdown”. “Thousands of tourists stranded at start of the summer break and NHS services hit,” it reported.

The Financial Times led its front page with “Global IT outage throws travel, payments and health into chaos”, adding “Microsoft users paralysed”,“Crowdstrike security update blamed” and “Fix likely to take days”.

The Times went with “IT company’s error could be terminal for getaways”, writing that “thousands of families face delays and cancellations after an IT failure grounded flights around the globe on what was set to be the busiest day for international travel in five years”.

“Day the world stood still”, the Daily Mirror headlined, adding that “transport, business, GPs and TV hit by global computer crash”.

The Daily Mail says “Global IT meltdown shows peril of going cashless”, calling the crisis a “digital pandemic”.

The Daily Express splashed on “How on earth did ‘digital pandemic’ paralyse the world?”, continuing: “Massive IT outage wreaks havoc for millions and may take days to fix”.

“Computer says no,” the i reported, adding “global IT crash hits GPs, hospitals, banks, planes and trains”.

The Independent went with “Massive Microsoft meltdown triggers worldwide havoc” and reported that it was the “world’s worst IT outage”, affecting some of its biggest companies.

Elsewhere, Spain’s El País said “Worldwide IT outage”, writing that a “simple anti-virus update blocked essential services around the world”.

In France, Libération headlined its weekend edition “Bug of the year 2024”, noting that the outage highlighted “our dependence on technology and our vulnerability”.

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