Global IT outage paralyses airlines, banks and hospitals

Computers running Windows around the world began crashing en masse with the "blue screen of death". The cause was a faulty update to CrowdStrike's Falcon cybersecurity software.

The outage hit airlines, airports, banks, TV channels, hospitals and stock exchanges. Thousands of flights in the US, Europe and Asia were delayed or cancelled.

CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz said it was not a cyberattack and that the problem had been identified and fixed. However, many computers require manual intervention to recover.

Microsoft later estimated the number of affected devices at about 8.5 million. The outage has been called one of the largest in IT history.