Massive Microsoft outage shuts down Sky News, Xbox Live and a whole lot more

A huge global outage hit Microsoft systems last night that has caused major disruption worldwide.

Among those affected (apart from Microsoft's own services) are airlines, broadcasters, hospitals and law enforcement.

You might have already noticed but Microsoft systems have suffered a huge outage worldwide, which has affected its own services and many other businesses. This includes broadcasters, airlines and banks.

In the UK, Sky News was unable to broadcast live for hours this morning, on Sky Q or Sky Glass , only returning to screens around 9.25am, while Xbox Live went down for Xbox One and Xbox Series X /S owners since roughly 11pm last night (Thursday 18 July).

Some reports suggest that there was an issue with an anti-virus update that took down Microsoft servers globally. American Airlines, for instance, claims that a cybersecurity firm, Crowdstrike, pushed a huge update that "bricked machines". The Swiss Federal Office for Cyber Security has come to the same conclusion.

If so, this could result in a massive undertaking by companies around the globe.

Crowdstrike is said to have 24,000 customers – each of which businesses with many employees and computers under their control. It is claimed that the solution could be that every affected PC and machine will need to be rebooted manually. That could prove a mammoth task for some firms who have thousands of PCs and systems in their operations.

It is currently unconfirmed, but the BBC suggests this is the likely source and process facing many this morning.

It could also explain why Sky News is back, with some other systems gradually returning – Xbox Live is also back up and running, for example – but disruption continues in many fields.

The BBC also reports that hospitals in multiple countries are having to reschedule operations, including NHS services in the UK, airlines have grounded planes, and many cash machines around the world are currently offline.

The Alaskan police even reported that their 911 services were down.

We'll bring you more on the outage as we get it.