Global computer virus hits Mass General, Logan Airport, RMV and Starbucks

It was an all-day wait at Logan Airport’s Terminal E. (Libby O’Neill/Boston Herald)

The global outage at Microsoft even affected coffee orders.

Starbucks, airports, the RMV, hospitals, banks, stores, trains and television stations were all hit by the computer virus.

“We lost our mobile ordering system and we can no longer accept credit cards, only cash and the Starbucks app. Funny, I had no idea anything was wrong until I got to work,” said a Starbucks employee in Cohasset. One customer said she was glad she had cash.

The outage is traced to a faulty update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company whose software is called “CrowdStrike Falcon.” That update sent users into a tailspin on Friday, with the “blue screen of death” error message appearing early on.

The outage impacted business, with Mass General Brigham canceling all “non-urgent” visits and operations.

Mass General said Friday that the hospital chain “does not have access to our clinical systems, including patient records and scheduling. As a result, all non-urgent visits at all Mass General Brigham hospitals and clinics have been canceled.” Emergency rooms remained open.

Mass General announced late Friday night that it hopes to be back at full capacity on Saturday: “We are doing everything we can to restore the electronic systems that support patient care across our system. Our teams will continue to work through the night to implement fixes and we currently expect to be back up and running tomorrow (Saturday). We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused to the many patients who had scheduled visits with us today,” the hospital chain said.

Travelers at Logan Airport were told early that flights were delayed or canceled. “Please check with your airline before coming to the airport,” Boston Logan said in a tweet.

They too are facing problems, the Motor Vehicle Register reported today.

MassDOT said the registry had to cancel customer service center appointments and vehicle inspections.

The RMV reported later in the afternoon that credit card payments were possible again and that the call center was available again.

All Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) customer service centers are now conducting in-person appointments. The exception is appointments for commercial learner permits and driver’s licenses, which were canceled today due to ongoing issues with automated testing stations.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on the social platform X. “The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been implemented.”

Microsoft reported “issues” and later blamed CrowdStrike for the global outage.

A number of billboards in New York City’s famous Times Square went down, with experts warning that the reliance on computers could be a vulnerable connection.

“It’s an ‘all our eggs in one basket’ situation,” Craig Shue, a professor and chair of the computer science department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, told The Associated Press. “It allows us to make sure that our ‘basket’ is high quality: The software vendor is trying to identify threats and respond to them quickly. But if something goes wrong at the same time and the basket fails, we’ve got a lot of broken eggs.”

Matt Stone and Herald Wire Reports contributed.