‘Blue screen of death’ hits NYC gov computers; jail cameras, arrest software down in ‘unprecedented’ global tech outage

The dreaded “blue screen of death” hit non-critical computers en masse in New York City’s government offices after a failed tech update crippled Microsoft software worldwide.

Jail cameras, arrest processing software and criminal court hearings – including for disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein – were impacted by the outage Friday, but 911 and emergency systems remained untouched, officials said.

Mayor Eric Adams pinned the mass crash on CrowdStrike, a US cybersecurity firm that sent out a faulty overnight software update to computers running Microsoft Windows.

“They sent out a software update that inadvertently took our systems offline,” Adams said from City Hall on Friday morning. “This was not a cyberattack.”

But the outage’s total impact on city government computers remained unclear later Friday.

Sources briefed on the matter said 20,000 of the 90,000 affected computers had been rebooted by late Friday afternoon, but that some city agencies wouldn’t be fully back up and running until Monday — with IT staff set to work through the weekend.

Representatives with the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation refused to directly answer The Post’s queries about how many computers were affected.

One spokesperson even committed the decidedly not tech savvy move of accidentally sending a Post reporter an email meant for City Hall, signaling their intent to stonewall on providing basic facts.

“(We) referred reporter back to the press conference and are not inclined to answer at this level of detail,” the email read.

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday morning made clear that the CrowdStrike failure — which rippled across New York City and the Empire State governmental agencies — was an “unprecedented situation.”

“This is a major, major public safety issue,” she said.

Screens in entire city governmental offices showed the “blue screen of death” — an ominous error message thrown up by the Windows operating system — during the morning, sources said.

Phil Banks, deputy mayor for public safety, said city Department of Corrections’ cameras and arrest processing software were affected.

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NYPD and FDNY had behind-the-scenes issues that wouldn’t affect day-to-day services, he said.

“The average, 99% of them won’t be impacted by it, and we’re pretty confident that the impact we will have will be cleared up before it does have an operational impact on the everyday public,” he said.

Roughly 80% of computers in Rikers Island were down until the early afternoon, a source told The Post.

Fixing city computers required the arduous process of manually updating each machine, said Matthew Fraser, the city’s chief technology officer.

He said the outage appeared to thankfully bypass literal life-or-death computer systems.

“There’s no impact to 911, no impact to 311, no impact to police, fire, EMS, radio or dispatch operations,” he said during a news conference.” Everything is running as expected. In addition to that, our operational technology networks and our (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) networks, things that supply our water systems, things that operate our traffic lights, none of those systems are also impacted.”

The process, which requires IT staffers to start the computers in safe mode, delete the corrupted program and then reboot, can take anywhere from two minutes to a half-hour, sources said.

Beyond city government, the outage brought arraignments in courthouses across the city — where people arrested are supposed to see a judge within 24 hours — to a screeching halt.

The normally bustling courtrooms sat mostly empty all morning.

A sign outside the clerk’s office in Manhattan warned people that “due to the outage, this office is unable to answer questions.”

The courts also saw delays in producing defendants from Rikers Island for their court dates — including Weinstein, whose appearance was delayed for more than two hours.

“I apologize to everyone for the delayed start… due to a disruption in the computer system both in court and the Department of Corrections, there was a delay in bringing Mr. Weinstein to the courtroom,” Justice Curtis Farber said when the convicted rapist finally arrived.

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Court sources told The Post that most of the computers at Manhattan criminal court were down.

Only about eight arraignments had been conducted in Queens Criminal Court by around 2 p.m., when 30 such hearings would have usually taken place by that time.

Arraignments in Brooklyn Criminal Court were also moving at a slowed pace.

In Bronx courts, arraignments restarted later in the day, but only for cases where bail wouldn’t be set, because it couldn’t be posted owing to the DOC computers being down, a spokeswoman with The Legal Aid Society said.

Arraignments in all five boroughs were back up and running by the late afternoon, said state Office of Court Administration spokesman Al Baker.

Scores of travelers at JFK and LaGuardia airports were also left stranded by the unprecedented and wide-scale internet disruption.

MTA subway, bus and commuter train passengers, however, appeared to have been spared major travel issues – at least those caused by the outage.

The countdown clocks that tell straphangers the estimated arrival of subway and commuter trains were the only customer-facing MTA system affected, said Janno Lieber, the transit agency’s chair and CEO.

“You may not have up-to-date information, just like the countdown clocks are not 100 percent,” he said Friday morning. “You may not have up-to-date information on exactly when commuter trains are arriving, but all of that is coming back online pretty promptly.”

Some MTA straphangers angrily took to X, formerly Twitter, to complain that their wireless OMNY taps weren’t accepted. They contended the MTA charged them for those unsuccessful taps.

One straphanger, when contacted by The Post, said her more than $20 charge for several OMNY taps was corrected.

“Thankfully I wasn’t overcharged, it was just several trips lumped together in one due to system updates/the big outage,” the straphanger said.

Katie Pawluk, a Brooklyn resident, who was on her way to Times Square Friday morning when she tried to tap to pay for the subway using the OMNY card on her phone– but the machine kept saying “deny.”

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She ended up having to put money on a MetroCard, missing her train, and when she checked her phone on the platform she saw she was charged twice.

She was told to contact customer service when she reached out to the MTA via X.

A MTA spokesperson said there were no OMNY-related issues from the tech outage.

The transit agency said incidents with overcharged riders were referred to OMNY’s contractor and are being investigated.

Hochul warned of a widespread impact on hospital systems across the state.

“Most have backup systems, but also backup systems are also not technology based, they’re based on people,” she said.

“It may go more to the hospital billing systems that are affected right now, as opposed to directly patient care.”

Representatives of major hospitals contacted by The Post, such Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, generally acknowledged some tech issues, but said patient care was not affected.

“There is a manual override for a process for when you have to not use the computer you go to paper,” said Mitch Katz, CEO of city-run Health + Hospitals.

“People should have a little bit extra patience with their doctor or nurse, but people should not neglect their care.”

State DMV systems also experienced problems, prompting Hochul to promise “maximum flexibility” for New Yorkers who’d miss deadlines such as for license renewals and expiring registrations.

Some DMV systems were restored by the afternoon, according to a tweet from the department.

“You can now process transactions online, but some in-person transactions may not yet be available,” the tweet stated.

Additional reporting by Tina Moore, Kyle Schnitzer, Georgett Roberts and  Khristina Narizhnay a

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