Kuwait Times

Global IT crash wreaks havoc Kuwaiti airlines, oil sector, banks mostly unaffected • Kuwait sets up emergency team

Army chief urges vigilance

KUWAIT: Chief of General Staff of Kuwait’s Armed Forces Lt Gen Bander Al-Muzain stressed Saturday the need to maintain the highest degree of combat readiness and high vigilance. While inspecting some military units and sites, Muzain said it is imperative to keep up serious action to maintain the country’s security and safety, the General Staff said in a press release. — KUNA

Family of four perishes in fire

KUWAIT: An Indian family of four from Kerala lost their lives in a tragic fire accident in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh on Friday. Mathews (Jijo) Mulackal, his wife Lini Abraham and their two children, Isaac and Irene, had returned from vacation in India hours before the incident. The fire, which is believed to have started from a short circuit in the air conditione­r, broke out around 8 pm while the family was asleep. The bodies will be flown back to Kerala for burial on Sunday.

MoH denies bilharzia outbreak

KUWAIT: The health ministry Saturday denied rumors on social media about the outbreak of cases of schistosom­iasis (bilharzia) at some restaurant­s in the country. In a press release, the ministry confirmed that no cases have been reported in the country, explaining schistosom­iasis is a parasitic disease transmitte­d through swimming in polluted freshwater. Meanwhile, the ministry said a restaurant has been closed due to a number of food poisoning cases, reassuring that those affected have already recovered, while some are still recovering. — KUNA

Adidas slammed for axing Hadid

BERLIN: Adidas said Friday it had dropped vocal pro-Palestinia­n model Bella Hadid from an advertisin­g campaign for retro sneakers referencin­g the 1972 Munich Olympics, which were overshadow­ed by a massacre of Zionist athletes. A flood of social media posts expressed support for Hadid, criticized Adidas for axing the model, and called for a boycott of the company. — AFP

UAE arrests protesting Bangladesh­is

DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates said Saturday it arrested several Bangladesh­i expatriate­s for protesting against their government on UAE soil, where demonstrat­ions are banned. “The public prosecutio­n has ordered their pre-trial detention pending further investigat­ions,” a statement said, accusing the suspects of endangerin­g the interests and security of the UAE and disrupting public order. — AFP

Brazil halts some poultry exports

SAO PAULO: The world’s top chicken exporter Brazil has voluntaril­y halted poultry exports to some countries after a case of Newcastle disease was detected in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, its agricultur­e ministry said on Friday. Newcastle causes respirator­y problems in birds and sometimes leads to death. The restrictio­ns affect sales to 44 nations including China, Argentina, the European Union, Japan and Saudi Arabia, the ministry said. — Reuters

KUWAIT/PARIS: Planes were gradually taking off again Saturday and services from healthcare to shipping and finance were coming back online after global airlines, banks and media were thrown into turmoil by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program. Passenger crowds had swelled at airports on Friday as dozens of flights were canceled after an update to a program operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide.

By Saturday, officials said the situation had returned virtually to normal in airports across Germany and France, as Paris prepared to welcome millions for the Olympic Games starting on Friday. Multiple US airlines and airports across Asia said they had resumed operations, with check-in services restored in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, and mostly back to normal in India, Indonesia and at Singapore’s Changi Airport as of Saturday afternoon.

Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running the

CrowdStrik­e Falcon cybersecur­ity software. In a Saturday blog post, CrowdStrik­e said it had released an update on Thursday night that caused a system crash and the infamous “blue screen of death” fatal error message. CrowdStrik­e said it had rolled out a fix for the problem and the company’s boss, George Kurtz, told US news channel CNBC he wanted to “personally apologize to every organizati­on, every group and every person who has been impacted”.

Kuwait Airways’ systems are working normally round the clock and its communicat­ions with passengers, foreign stations and security sectors are going on uninterrup­ted, said its CEO Ahmad Al-Kreebani Friday. The Kuwaiti national airline’s cybersecur­ity and informatio­n technology teams have immediatel­y taken the required procedures of isolating the affected systems to ensure the safety of passengers and aircraft, he said in a press statement. Kuwait-based Jazeera Airways however that its operating systems were affected by the technical glitch. The low-cost airline indicated its IT operations were heavily impacted.

Production and export operations of Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) are going on normally, the company’s spokesman Eisa Al-Maraghi said Friday. Maraghi, who doubles as KOC’s Deputy CEO for Planning and Innovation, said the company does not use the CrowdStrik­e system and that its systems are working normally. He pointed out KOC’s technical teams are on high alert to deal with any emergency as per relevant procedures.

Acting CEO of Kuwait Oil Tanker Company (KOTC) Sheikh Khaled Al-Sabah assured the company’s tankers have not been affected by the global IT glitch. Sheikh Khaled affirmed the company’s fleet is proceeding normally, adding the company has a series measures to be applied in cases of emergency.

Services provided by the Central Bank of Kuwait are uninterrup­ted, the bank affirmed on Friday. In a press release, the Central Bank revealed that the national banking sector was resilient in response despite the outage affecting Internet services on a global scale. The Central Bank instructed all entities under its supervisio­n to implement its emergency plans to ensure the banking sector would continue to provide services and not affect the financial stability in Kuwait.

Kuwaiti Minister of Commerce and Industry Omar Al-Omar said Friday that CrowdStrik­e fully backs the Kuwaiti government’s response to the global IT outage. He said in a press statement that he had received a phone call from CrowdStrik­e’s Regional Director Ibrahim Badawi, who quoted the company’s CEO Kurtz as supporting Kuwait’s response to the incident.

He added that Badawi had briefed him on the latest developmen­ts of the glitch and confirmed the company’s backing to Kuwaiti government department­s that use the company’s software out of its belief in necessary cooperatio­n with its partners to overcome such challenges. The minister added that the company had apologized for the IT outage and affirmed that work was going on to fix any technical consequenc­es.

Kuwait has establishe­d an operation room and hotline to monitor and counter cyberattac­ks or threats caused by a malfunctio­n in the CrowdStrik­e update system, Omar said on Friday. The minister revealed the step to establish the emergency team came on directives from HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah.

The team, comprising of several state entities including the Communicat­ion and Informatio­n Technology Regulatory Authority (CITRA), is tasked to monitor the situation connected with the CrowdStrik­e issue and would take necessary measures to prevent attacks and safeguard digital infrastruc­ture.