Global IT outage hits NC government offices. Numerous RDU flights canceled or delayed.

A worldwide computer outage is being felt in the Triangle on Friday, with state and local government systems down and numerous canceled and delayed flights at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

The outage originated with a software update by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company used by governments and businesses around the world.

Both the state Department of Health and Human Services and the Division of Motor Vehicles say they’ve been affected. All 115 DMV driver license offices were closed Friday morning, though they began to reopen midday. All 126 license plate agencies, which are run by private contractors, were also closed, and only a fraction of those were expected to reopen Friday afternoon.

The outage also affected the DMV’s online services , though some still functioned Friday.

The problems affected systems that use Microsoft Windows, said Nicole Meister, spokeswoman for the state Department of Information Technology. Meister said DIT officials were still trying to determine the extent of the impact on state agencies.

“These impacts vary by agency and service,” Meister wrote in an email. “The issue stems from a vendor software bug and is not related to any cybersecurity incident. The vendor is providing its customers steps to correct the issue, and NCDIT is going through those steps as they are provided.”

On social media Friday, workers across the world shared photos of their work computers displaying the BSOD, or “Blue Screen of Death,” which is a critical error message on Microsoft Windows.

‘Working to recover as quickly as possible’

UNC-Chapel Hill said Friday that more than 20,000 of its computers use CrowdStrike and that restoring them requires “manual fixes.”

“The UNC IT community is working to recover as quickly as possible,” it wrote on X.

On the social media platform X, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue was “not a security incident or cyberattack.”

“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” Kurtz wrote. “We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.”

Founded in 2011, CrowdStrike today has around 29,000 customers, according to the company’s public filings. The firm says its subscriber base includes most Fortune 500 companies. CrowdStrike is headquartered in Austin, Texas and has multiple workers based in the Triangle, according to LinkedIn.

Security software runs alongside operating systems with “extremely high privileges” explained Ray Zeisz, senior director of the North Carolina State University Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, meaning it has access to more memory and files than average users do.

“So when that software, either on purpose or erroneously, is pushed out, it can impact millions of machines,” Zeisz said.

Full impact of the outage still unclear

The extent of the outage emerged Friday morning. The City of Raleigh said “some city services” were affected, but that it wasn’t sure of the full impact.

“Our most essential services, including water and 911 dispatch, are operating,” the city wrote on X.

Duke Health said “essential computer functions” in its hospitals and clinics were affected, resulting in delays for some services. The health system said its clinics were open and that “critical patient services, including emergency departments at Duke University, Duke Regional and Duke Raleigh hospitals,” were able to accommodate patients.

UNC Health said it had “scattered computer outages” across its system, but that patient services had not been affected.

Meanwhile, airlines had canceled more than 20 flights departing RDU as of 9:30 a.m., and another 50 outgoing flights were listed as delayed. Many flights were getting out, though few of them on time.

American Airlines said it had been able to restore its operations as of 5 a.m., but delays and cancellations for all carriers are expected to ripple throughout the day.

RDU officials urged people to confirm the status of their flight with their airline before heading to the airport. The Federal Aviation Administration echoed that advice, adding that its systems were unaffected by the outage.

Many of those already at the airport tried to make the best of the situation. Billy Warden of Raleigh posted a photo on X of people sprawled out on the floor in one corner of Terminal 2 “as we wait out the software snafu.”

“Fortunately, Microsoft hasn’t shut down coffee or bathrooms,” Warden wrote.

However, some coffee orders were disrupted Friday morning at Starbucks locations around and outside the Triangle.

“Starbucks is among those companies experiencing impacts due to a widespread third-party systems outage, resulting in a temporary outage of our mobile order ahead and pay features.” a company spokesperson said in an email. “We continue to welcome and serve customers in the vast majority of our stores and drive-thrus and are doing everything we can to bring all systems online as quickly as possible.”