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is provided by... woman: a successful business owner sells his company and restores his father's historic jazz club with his son. a raymond james financial advisor get to know you, your passions, and the way you bring people together. life well planned. announcer: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news" >> hello, i am lewis vaughan jones. you are watching the context on bbc news. >> the boards don't really tell you anything, it tells you where to go but there are no times of lights. >> i want to start by saying that we are deeply sorry for the impact that we have caused to

customers, travelers, anyone affected by this, including our company. >> there will be someone in crowdstrike who will be in trouble for not getting this right and then there will be a lot of people working this weekend in businesses all over the world to try to fix this problem. lewis: some experts say this could be the biggest global i.t. failure ever. we will run through all the chaos and tried to get the bottom of some of the confusion, too. also, coming up, he taught u.n. court says the israeli occupation of palestinian territories is illegal, the first time the icj has ruled on this. welcome to the program. it's been a day of worldwide i.t. chaos after a worldwide outage and lots of countries affecting millions of people. more than 4000 flights were

canceled aund the world. banking, health care affected, and some tv channels taken off air. cybersecurity company crowdstrike said it found a defect in its update for users of microsoft windows that have been fixed and put in place, but microsoft says that their services have recovered. the computer difficulties caused some of the biggest u.s. and european airlines to ground their planes, chaos at airports. this is a look at berlin, germany, queues there. madrid, passengers waiting and waiting. airports in rome also severely impacted. [applause] this was the moment in gatwick airport in london that electronic boards came back to life. long queues forming theras well. here is our technology editor.

>> the world woke up this morning to global chaos. >> massive tech outages are affecting airlines, businesses, offices, companies worldwide. >> airports were affected with thousands of lights grounded all over from the u.k. to hong kong to the u.s. >> my husband and, we put him on a 10:00 a.m. flight, the rest of us tomorrow. that will not work. >> skies emptying out as the outage took hold. here come the medicine deliveries to pharmacies were disrupted, and gps in england had problems accessing patient records. it even affected software used by broadcasters, and rather abruptly took some tv stations off air. the cause? >> at crowdstrike -- >> a single update from this

u.s. antirus company. you may not have never heard of crowdstrike before but it has nearly 24,000 customers around the world, many of them huge organizations like airlines and banks. >> we are deeply sorry for the impact that we have caused to customers, to travelers, anyone affected by this, including our company. we know what the issue is, we are resolving, have resolved the issue now. it is recovering systems out there. >> so what went wrong? to be clear, this was not a hack or cyberattack, you don't need to change your passwords. a faulty update meant millions of microsoft users saw this screen pop up. if you know it, it will make you shiver, the blue screen of ath. it pops up whenever there is a critical operation happening in your pc. in this case, failing to reload properly. it only affected machines running microsoft but there are lots of them.

so what is the fix? it is not straightforward. every machine needs a manual reboot in safe mode which is not as simple as turning it on and off again. microsoft says some have had to do it 15 times, so it could take a while. spare a thought or idea departments. >> there will be someone in crowdstrike who will be in a lot of trouble right now for not getting this right, and there will be a lot of people working this weekend in businesses all over the world to try and fix this problem and patch it up. at the same ti, this is the price we pay for being so reliant on digital infrastructure. >> from travel chaos to grocery shop payment problems, they will now be tough questions about the damage done by one faulty update. how did it slip through microsoft's safety nets? the cybersecurity world still advises it's a good idea to keep on top of software updates although perhaps today is not the databank that particular drum.

lewis: taking us through the major updates. let's take a closer look at transport, because that was severely hit. here is our transport correspondent. >> when a start to the summer holidays. this was gatwick airport, passengers who should have been on planes, forced to wait on delays. >> people are tired, they have been handing out water. the boards don't really say anything. it tells you where to go but there are no departure, no times of lights. >> this was the scene at stansted. many airlines have been i've been able to use their systems as normal. ryanair told people to leave their airport if their flight was canceled as staff couldn't help them on-site. east midlands airport, the outage slowed everything down. >> we have had to revert to pen and paper, manually check our customers in. that takes longer for the customers. we have seen a good operation

but a slower operation. we expect that to continue today. >> edinburgh stopped accepting incoming flights as queues built up, passengers trying to figure out their options. >> there was nothing on the boards, no ground staff. >> a little bit stressful. hopefully it is ok now but the staff at the airport have been great. >> and amsterdam's airport, a major european hub, more queue and disruptions. klm suspended most of its operations. the u.s. was particularly affected. look at all of these planes stuck on the ground in newark. flights have resumed at heathrow but there have been delays and cancellations on one of the busiest days of the year here. among those affected is american airlines, and here at heathrow airport terminal three, at a time passengers were told they could not drop off their bags and we just have to wait for more information. >> on the railway, many of

britain's rail operators have seen an impact. most svices have been running but there have been short notice cancellations and problems with passenger information systems. people whose flights have been canceled should be offered a refund but probably not compensation as this is extraordinary circumstances. as the afternoon went on, some of the worst affected airlines were able to get up and running again. at gatwick, that was their reaction to a system reboot after a nearly seven-hour wait to check in for a flight to miami. on such a busy day, a knock on impact will take time to sort out. lewis: this has been a huge impact, so many areas, so many parts of the world. bring us up to date, where are we now? >> global impact and it is extraordinary to see just how much has been affected by this. we heard about that software bug

that has been fixed but experts say the manual reboot of each of the affected microsoft computers will take a huge amount of work. we heard in the report there that airports are starting to get back to normal quite slowly. over the last couple hours, some airline services are beginning to return to normal. here in the u.k., for example, heathrow and gatwick saw huge disruptions earlier today over many hours but things are beginning to look better for passengers. of course, a really busy day today with people getting away, starting to get away for the summer holidays. we can bring you the latest from united airlines, in the last 20 minutes or so, they posted on x that they have resumed some flights but expect schedule disruptions to continue throughout friday. also here in the u.k., we heard about the problems about some gp

surgeries, pharmacies, as well. we have heard again in the last 40 minutes that ambulance services have recorded higher than normal demand while in i.t. outage was going on. in particular in london, the surge has been described as huge. continuing disruption across the world. it has been fixed the issue but it will continue for the rest of today, tomorrow, perhaps further down the line. lewis: we have heard the health minister in the u.k. urging patients, people to be patient when dealing with gps trying to access health services because the strain will be so significant. what about people watching at home in terms of things like future risks now, what to be looking out for? >> we had a statement from the national cybersecurity center this evening. what they are morning is for people to be on guard, to be

very alert to phising incidents in the wake of this outage. that is when they try to send scan emails, text messages intended to trick the person into revealing sensitive information and possibly transfer money as well. we had a statement from the ncsc saying an increase i phishing has already been observed as malicious actors look to take advantage of the situation, urging other organizations to review their guidelines to ensure protections against phishing are in place, also calls on all of us to be alert to emails and text messages as well, not to fall for it. lewis: thank you so much for bringing us up to date with the latest. we will delve a little more into the technical side now. tom parker, the chief technology

officer of net spi. thank you for coming on the program. can you talk goes through in relatively simple terms what we know about what actually happened, do we know a sequence of events here? >> it's really important not to speculate about these, not to have knee-jerk reactions, keep composed in a time of crisis like this. what we do know is that of course there was an update pushed to the crowdstrike falcon agent which resulted in blue screens of death. as one of your correspondents mention, it requires manual intervention with the desktop or server. for you and i got home, fixing a computer is an inconvenience, but if you have tens of thousands of workstation that you now have to individually go to in your company, that becomes really disruptive. we will be dealing with this for weeks to come. lewis: talk about turning it off

and on again, which is like an office joke. how serious is that as a solution? >> unfortunately, switching it on and off will not fix it because the agent that loads the faulty software update will continue to load every time you turn it on and off. i'm sure many have tried that to no avail. unfortunately, the computer has to be booted into a special mode, generally something that requires some level of expert experience in order to effectively manually remove the software that is causing the blue screens, and then rebooting the machine again. unfortunately, it is not completely a trivial process. lewis: you hinted at the end of your last answer about time frames but surely the big companies with big i.t. departments, big budgets, they should be able to get around and

sort this relatively quickly? >> i think short is the operative word. -- should is the operative word. at the end of the day, crowdstrike is one of many pieces of sensitive software that can run with a really high privilege in an operating system that can cause this kind of outage and blue screen. i think businesses really need to start reflecting on especially talking about airlines, transportation, hospitals, these are critical sectors that we really don't want to be disrupted. i think this is a really good exercise to reflect on how do we come back more quickly in the event of something like this occurring? lewis: as for crowdstrike, a company that until today that many have never heard of, the share price took a bit of a battering in the circumstances. talk about the company. what do you think it means, today's events for it? >> yesterday before this

happened, crowdstrike was a leader in the cybersecurity industry, one of the largest companies in cyber. today they still are and tomorrow they will continue to be. this type of defect can happen to anyone. my suggestion to anyone that is using crowdstrike or considering using crowdstrike, obviously, the response that crowdstrike decides to have, the transparency they have. in cybersecurity, trust is really important. the most important thing is to acknowledge this could happen to anyone. there is obviously some lessons to be learned in the crowdstrike team. what is really important is, consumers of the product, to look at how they have rebuilt that trust with customers and how they will prevent this from happening in the future. lewis: fascinating. thank you for that. we finished talking about crowdstrike.

who are they and how has this failure delivered such a widespread global impact? here is our world business reporter. >> there is a reason crowdstrike exists. above all else, to protect software users from the problems that we have seen today. as a cybersecurity firm, its focus is on managing external threats from bad actors. so it's a huge embarrassment to find itself at the heart of this situation. the company based in austin, texas was founded in 2011. six years on, valued at a billion dollars. by the time the nasdaq closed on thursday, it's overall value was around $84.5 billion. but then it rolled out a content for its software on microsoft windows devices, and here is what happened, the blue screen of death. it sent machines into a boot loop, starting repeatedly and unsuccessfully.

crowdstrike's share price fell by a fifth in premarket trading and is still done 15% when the nasdaq opened. that's a last billions of dollars off of the company's value. in a statement, the company ceo george kurtz said this was not a security incident or cyberattack. the issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed. the global disruption continues. invests will be watching carefully to see how its response to the challenge unfolds. lewis: let's take a quick look at what is happening across america. our correspondent is at ronald reagan washington international airport. >> in the u.s., the main way this has impacted customers has been airlines. some of the biggest airlines have experienced severe delays, some even cancellations. at least 1300 flights had been delayed, about 675 canceled. here at reagan airport in washington, d.c., a number of lights have been delayed or canceled, but most passengers

say they have been able to reschedule for later today or tomorrow. it seems like most airlines are getting things back up and running after today's outage. president biden have been briefed on the situation but this is really an airline problem at the moment, technical difficulty they are experiencing. while things are relatively calm, we have seen footage across some airports in the u.s. facing more significant disruptions with more crowds of people unsure if they can get on their flights, but those infamous blue screens showing that nothing is working, people unsure if they can check in their backs, if their flights are still running, because the screens are showing an error message at some of the major airports in the u.s. at the moment. things are starting to get back up and running. deltona, the world's second biggest operator in terms of passenger numbers, had to pause flights completely. they are now up and running. american airlines and united were also facing difficulties

but again slowly getting back to normal. i think while there has been significant disruption, likely to be significant disruption, passengers are slowly starting to get back off the ground again. lewis: plenty more coming up. around the world and across the u.k., this is bbc news. ♪

lewis: this is bbc news. in a landmark opinion, u.n.'s top court says that israel's occupation of palestinian territories is against international law. the international court of justice said israel should stop settling activities in the occupied west bank and east jerusalem and end its illegal occupation of those areas and the gaza strip. the advisory opinion is not binding but the first time it's delivered a position on the legality of the 57-year occupation. >> by 11 votes to four, it is

the opinion that the state of israel's continued presence in the occupied territory is unlawful. by 11 votes to four, it is of the opinion that the state of israel is under obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the occupied palestinian territory as rapidly as possible. lewis: israel's prime minister benjamin netanyahu criticized the court opinion as a "decision of lies." he said the jewish people are not occupiers in their own land, not in our eternal capital, jerusalem, nor our ancestral heritage, internationally known as the west bank. the palestinian delegation at the hague welcomed the opinion. >> this is a watershed moment for palestine, for injustice and for international law.

israel's occupation has been declared unlawful by the world court which has stipulated that it must be terminated completely and as rapidly as possible. this means israel is under obligation to end this illegal colonial enterprise unconditionally, a in our view, that means immediately and totally. lewis: the professor of international law at the geneva graduate institute of development studies. thank you for coming on the program. >> thank you for having me. lewis: what do you make of this ruling? >> historical ruling, of course. for the first time an international court of justice not only established that the presence of israel and the occupied territories is illegal, but also established a variety of violations of international law by israel, due to its

practices in the occupied territory. lewis: what impact does that have in the real life in the region right now? >> certainly as you said, it the courts opinion is an opinion, not binding, but it certainly carries a lot of moral value, authority value. it is also a legal opinion, so it states the law. by stating the law, this has an impact on states. the court has also said that every state, international organizations, including the united nations, shallot recognize the legality of the presence of israeli occupied territories, shall cooperate in this way. in addition, naturally, this could guide the foreign policies of states, could put, isolated israel even more.

lewis: many countries didn't recognize it anyway. >> of course. but little by little, this is something that may bring a change. we have to wait and see. another impact could be some sort of cascade in terms of legal proceedings that can be brought against israel or israeli leaders. for instance, the court has also stated that gaza is occupied territory even though israel disengaged in 2005, alsoaid that it is even more occupied now because of the conflict. this would have an impact on the current proceedings. in addition to that, it has claimed the settlements by israel in the west bank, east jerusalem are contrary to international law. this is the basis for war crimes. the international criminal court is currently investigating the situation in palestine, can

investigate the responsibility, criminal responsibility of individuals responsible for the settlements. so you have a variety of legal effects that may come from this ruling. lewis: what do you make a benjamin netanyahu's argument that the jewish people are not occupiers in their own land? >> that is an important point. the vice president of the court has a dissenting opinion. according to her view, the court should not have ruled on this matter because the conflict between israel and palestine is bigger than simply evaluating the legality of the practices and policies of israel in the occupied territories. she claims it's a question of first of all, the claim by israel of those territories, historically, considered to be a part of the jews' community

identity. on the other hand, denial by southern arab states for israel to exist, those territories. she said perhaps the court shou not have announced on this matter without having all the elements of the picture at its disposal. lewis: thank you very much for coming on the program. stay with us. 20 more coming up. i am lewis vaughan jones. this is bbc news. bye announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... financial services firm, raymond james. announcer: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪

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