EP emergency services unaffected by cyber outage; travelers hit the road after flights canceled

When Cole Huestis finally runs onto the lacrosse field tomorrow and settles into his long-stick midfielder position, he will have traveled about 950 miles in about 14 hours — a trip that was supposed to take two hours — after a massive internet failure on Friday resulted in the cancellation of his family’s flight from Minneapolis to Buffalo, New York.

Cole, 12, is a Central Middle School student and a member of the undefeated 2030 Team Minnesota lacrosse team, which consists of players from across the metro area. The team’s first game is scheduled at 10:30 am Eastern time Saturday. The Huestis family is scheduled to pull into Buffalo less than nine hours before that.

“We’re trying to get about 20 or so Minnesota boys out to Buffalo for a lacrosse tournament near Niagara Falls,” Dawn Huestis told Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN) from her family car, which was traveling east in Ohio at about 8: 30pm Friday.

Heustis said she noticed something was wrong late Thursday night when she checked the Sun Country website. “When I tried to check in online the site looked like it was down,” she said.

When she checked again Friday morning, the site displayed error messages.

“I turned on the news and saw the chaos that was happening at MSP,” she said. About an hour later, they received the cancellation notice.

“So we had to go into Plan B mode, which ended up renting a car,” she said. “We are currently just outside Cleveland. Four hours to go to Buffalo, New York!”

As she talked, Cole, his brother Bryce, 8, and their dad, Cully, were munching on French fries they had just purchased at a roadside stop somewhere around Toledo, Ohio.

The biggest disappointment so far: Plan B eliminated a visit to Niagara Falls on Friday. “Hopefully, we will have some time to do that on Sunday,” Dawn said.

The trip has been smooth so far, in part thanks to the picnic basket full of sandwiches and snacks that her mother put together for them at the last minute. “That was a blessing in disguise,” Dawn said.

Her primary concern now: a flight home on Sunday.

No emergency services disruptions in EP

The cyber outage, caused by a software upgrade by the cyber security company CrowdStrike, resulted in chaos in airports around the globe, with thousands of flights grounded. Minnesota businesses, hospitals, government services and even the morning rush hour commute were disrupted by the outage, according to a Star Tribune story.

The outage affected Microsoft Windows operating systems, forcing some businesses to close, causing many websites to fail, and affecting access to some electronic medical records and dictation applications, individual workstations, and some medical equipment and machines, the Star Tribune reported.

The City of Eden Prairie, including police and fire dispatching, was unaffected by the cyber failure.

“Other than the liquor store registers being temporarily offline earlier today, the city did not experience any disruptions in service related to the CrowdStrike update,” said Kari Knoll, the city’s senior communications coordinator. “Our IT employees worked throughout the night to ensure our systems remained operational.”

Other than a few business closures, including Speedway on Pioneer Trail, which posted an 8 ½-by-11-inch sign on its door announcing, “All Systems are Down. Closed until everything gets Resolved.” An adjacent sign asked those arriving for deliveries or pickups to knock on the door.

Tavern 4&5 was unaffected by the outage, according to a restaurant manager, and was bustling with mid-afternoon patrons.

Several people who responded to EPLN’s request for comments on how the outage affected told them of being unable to access the Department of Motor Vehicles online and at the Chaska location.

One reported problems using credit cards at a convenience store. Another said her auto payments weren’t processed by her credit union.

Others reported being unaffected. “Not at all … however, I’m not working,” one poster said. Just hanging out at home.”

Travelers like the Huestis family seemed to be the most affected by the outage.

Gillian Holte, an EPLN photographer, was supposed to fly from Nantucket Memorial Airport in Massachusetts to JFK Airport in New York.

“About two hours before my flight (it) was canceled,” she reported via email. “I believe I was able to cancel for a full refund (have to double check that) but as of right now, I am taking a ferry from Nantucket to Hyannis, and then a bus from Hyannis to Boston, and then leaving Boston in the morning.”

She promised to provide an update Saturday.

Two incidents collide

A combination of what seems to be two separate and unrelated incidents caused the major technology disruptions, according to Ben Hymans, an Eden Prairie-based independent technology consultant and chief technology officer for EPLN.

“The first issue was with Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Services,” Hymans said. “This impacted some organizations and software makers who make use of Azure cloud services. It also caused disruptions to users of the Microsoft 365 Productivity suite (Word, Outlook, Sharepoint, etc.).”

The second issue involves widespread reports of the dreaded windows “blue screen of death,” Hymans said.

“This issue was caused by a legitimate, but faulty update from a security vendor named CrowdStrike,” he said. “CrowdStrike works with many large organizations to provide security solutions. The faulty update caused Windows-based devices with the CrowdStrike software to experience a critical failure.”

Some computers were able to be recovered with a reboot, but others required more extensive repairs, Hymans said. “Many average consumers were feeling the effects of this issue because the large organizations they depend on (like airlines and governmental offices) were impacted by the problem,” he said.

The incident may have grown in scale due to a cascading failure effect, he said. “This can occur when part of a complex system fails, which then triggers larger failures across the whole system.”

Based on current information, Mac and Linux systems appear to be unaffected by the issue, Hymans said. He added that the issue is not the result of any malware or cyberattack.

Arctic Wolf: ‘Remain vigilant’

Eden Prairie-based cyber security firm Arctic Wolf released a statement Friday warning businesses to be vigilant.

“Threat actors are known to take advantage of opportunities to exploit business disruptions,” the statement said in part. “It is important to remain vigilant and work with your cybersecurity partners to avoid being victim to a cyberattack.”

Although Arctic Wolf’s business and service were not impacted, according to the statement, “Some of our customers who leverage CrowdStrike for endpoint security are experiencing widespread outages.

“Arctic Wolf continues to protect and monitor these customers’ environments while they focus their attention on recovering from this event. We are also working with our partners to ensure joint customers receive the support and guidance they need to get their business up and running.”

Editor’s note: Ben Hymans is a board member of Eden Prairie Local News.