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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 worldwide.
Jail cameras, arrest processing software and other city governmental functions were affected by the outage Friday, but 911 and emergency systems remained untouched, city 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 Friday morning. “This was not a cyber attack.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul called the CrowdStrike failure — which rippled across New York City and the Empire State governmental agencies — an “unprecedented situation.”
She promised “maximum flexibility” by the state for problems, such as New Yorkers missing DMV deadlines.
“This is a major, major public safety issue,” she said.
“This has had a widespread impact on hospital systems.”
The outage’s total impact on city government computers remained unclear Friday morning, but sources said that City Council members’ computers were down, as were non-critical devices in NYPD headquarters.
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.
Beyond city government, the outage hit most of the computers in the Manhattan Criminal courthouse, 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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Criminal arraignments were temporarily halted amid the outage, sources said.
“Due to the outage this office is unable to answer questions,” one handwritten sign on a court clerk’s office stated.
Scores of travelers at JFK and LaGuardia airports were also left stranded by the unprecedented and wide-scale internet disruption.