Major PH telcos not affected by global Microsoft outage

The services of three of the Philippines’ major telecommunications players were not affected by the global IT system outage, which has caused disruptions in airline and banking services locally.

In an advisory, Globe Telecom Inc. said its core services, which include call, text, and data connectivity, remain unaffected by the Microsoft system outage.

“The issue was isolated to a few Windows-based workstations that our employees use for work for the most part and some servers that do not materially affect our core services,” said Anton Bonifacio, Globe chief information security officer.

PLDT-Smart said it “does not use any software from CrowdStrike in its ecosystem, thus our operations remain unaffected by the current outage.”

DITO Telecommunity’s chief technology officer Rodolfo Santiago said that “DITO was not affected by the Microsoft outage.”

Locally, major Philippine banks reported technical issues that caused difficulties in accessing digital banking services.

Major budget carriers Cebu Pacific and AirAsia Philippines were also hit by the Microsoft global outage, which caused flight delays, in turn causing long lines and congestion at airports.

Airlines, media companies, banks, and telecom firms around the world have reported that system outages are disrupting their operations. 

Department of Information and Communications Technology Assistant Secretary and spokesperson Renato Paraiso told GMA News Online that the global IT system outage was not due to hacking or a cyberattack.

“Hindi siya hacking, hindi siya cyberattack. It’s a faulty update,” Paraiso said.

(It's not hacking or a cyberattack. It's a faulty update.)

According to an alert sent by US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, its widely used "Falcon Sensor" software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the “Blue Screen of Death”.

The alert also shared a manual workaround to resolve the issue. —VBL, GMA Integrated News