The chief executive of the cybersecurity firm behind the worldwide IT catastrophe says he is "deeply sorry", as experts say the chaotic disruptions revealed a major vulnerability with global implications.
The outage was caused by a faulty software update from the firm CrowdStrike and affected computers running Microsoft Windows. CrowdStrike said it was not a hacking incident or cyberattack, apologised and said a fix was on the way.
"I wanna start with saying we're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this," CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said in an interview with NBC's Today Show.
READ MORE: Biggest IT outage in history brings the world to a halt
"We know what the issue is, we're resolving and have resolved the issue."
Experts said the dramatic breadth of the disruptions underscored the vulnerability of worldwide dependence on software that comes from only a handful of providers.
"This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world's core internet infrastructure," said Ciaran Martin, a professor at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government and former Head of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre.
UNSW Professor Salil Kanhere said it appeared CrowdStrike's software update had been rolled out globally "without proper testing".
"This incident appears to violate every good software engineering practice we know," he said.
READ MORE: What we know about the massive global IT outage
"It also points to the need for mechanisms that can protect a computer's operating system from potentially misbehaving anti-virus software."
The head of Germany's IT security agency, Claudia Plattner, said that "the problems will last some time — we can't expect a very quick solution."
Shares in CrowdStrike were down almost 10 per cent in early trading on Friday morning in the US (Saturday morning AEST).
- Reported with Associated Press
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