Worldwide IT outage causes blackout of several screens in New York's Times Square

NEW YORK CITY, US - JULY 19: A global IT outage at Microsoft on Friday led to a major global disruption, causing the “blue screen of death” errors for users across Europe and in New York’s Times Square. Later severeal screen turned black due to the worldwide outage. The incident, triggered by a recent update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, has affected various critical sectors including airports, airlines, businesses, media outlets, and stock exchanges. In addition to the widespread European impact, the outage also resulted in blue screen errors appearing on some digital billboards in Times Square, New York. The “blue screen of death,” a common term for critical system errors, became visible to passersby as a direct consequence of the global communication failure. Microsoft confirmed that the IT failure stemmed from an update to the CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor software, which is part of the company’s cybersecurity infrastructure. This update inadvertently led to a substantial IT outage, affecting both Microsoft services and numerous other businesses. (Footage by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)