Category Archives: Microsoft

EU events on curbing big tech ‘distorted’ by attenders with industry links

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Campaigners say 21% of people at workshops did not disclose on their applications relationships with firms being discussed

More than one in five attenders at EU events on regulating big tech companies did not disclose links to the industry when applying to take part, according to transparency campaigners who say hidden networks are distorting public debate.

Researchers at three NGOs analysed nearly 4,000 registrations at European Commission workshops organised earlier this year to test companies’ compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a law to curb anti-competitive behaviour.

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Talk to your plants? Now the first AI-powered garden will allow them to talk back

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Collaboration between leading garden designer and Microsoft to go on display at Chelsea flower show 2025

Hardcore gardeners sometimes, when no one else is listening, talk quietly to their prize blooms. But at next year’s Chelsea flower show, visitors will be encouraged to have a chat with its first ever AI-powered garden.

The garden designer Tom Massey has partnered with Microsoft to create the Avanade “intelligent” garden. Sensors in the soil are partnered with an AI trained on Royal Horticultural Society plant data and gardening advice, meaning visitors can ask the garden: “How are you?”

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Microsoft introduces ‘AI employees’ that can handle client queries

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US company gives customers the ability to build own virtual agents as well as releasing 10 off-the-shelf bots

Microsoft is introducing autonomous artificial intelligence agents, or virtual employees, that can perform tasks such as handling client queries and identifying sales leads, as the tech sector strives to show investors that the AI boom can produce indispensable products.

The US tech company is giving customers the ability to build their own AI agents as well as releasing 10 off-the-shelf bots that can carry out a range of roles including supply chain management and customer service.

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CrowdStrike to apologize for global IT outage in congressional testimony

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Faulty update from cybersecurity company ground hospitals, airports and payment systems to halt in July

A CrowdStrike senior executive will apologize for causing a global software outage that ground the operations of hospitals, airports, payment systems and personal computers around the world to a halt in July.

Adam Meyers, senior vice-president for counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, is slated to testify before Congress on Tuesday. Meyers will speak to the House homeland security cybersecurity and infrastructure protection subcommittee. In testimony made available before the hearing, he wrote: “I am here today because, just over two months ago, on July 19, we let our customers down … On behalf of everyone at CrowdStrike, I want to apologize.” He will say the company has undertaken “a full review of our systems” to prevent the cascade of errors from occurring again.

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Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to restart to power Microsoft AI operations

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Pennsylvania plant was site of most serious nuclear meltdown and radiation leak in US history in 1979

A nuclear reactor at the notorious Three Mile Island site in Pennsylvania is to be activated for the first time in five years after its owners, Constellation Energy, struck a deal to provide power to Microsoft’s proliferating artificial intelligence operations.

The plant was the location of the most serious nuclear meltdown and radiation leak in US history, in March 1979 when the loss of water coolant through a faulty valve caused the Unit 2 reactor to overheat. More than four decades later, the reactor is still in a decommissioning phase.

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Russia propaganda group behind fake Kamala Harris hit-and-run story, says Microsoft

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Microsoft researchers found that the group created a video, paid an actor to appear as the alleged victim, and spread the claim through a fake website

A false claim circulating on social media that Kamala Harris was involved in an alleged hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011 is the work of a covert Russian disinformation operation, according to new research by Microsoft.

Researchers found that the group created a video, paid an actor to appear as the alleged victim, and spread the claim through a fake website for a nonexistent San Francisco news outlet named KBSF-TV. The Russian group responsible, which Microsoft dubs Storm-1516, is described as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm.

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Sydney commuters face delays as light rail workers strike – as it happened

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Emergency meetings to assess IT outage fallout

Further emergency meetings will be held to examine the fallout of a global IT outage in Australia, AAP reports.

We are still in recovery stage … there is still more work to do to make sure that the residual issues arising from this outage are able to be addressed.

There will be opportunity in time to reflect on what’s occurred over the last couple of days, whether it exposes vulnerabilities that we are able to address.

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NHS England warns of disruption next week as global IT outage wreaks havoc

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Flights continue to be cancelled while GP surgeries and hospitals will be dealing with impact of backlogs

The aftershocks of the Microsoft IT outage continued to ripple across the UK on Saturday as holidaymakers and patients suffered the brunt of the computer systems failure.

Customers experienced flight cancellations, faulty train ticket machines and failures in GPs’ prescription and appointment systems after a flawed security update from CrowdStrike, a US cybersecurity firm, crashed 8.5 million devices across the world running the Windows operating system.

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Holidaymakers warned of more airport delays after global Windows outage

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Flyers advised to check with providers for ‘extra steps’, with at least 45 UK flights cancelled on Saturday

Holidaymakers have been warned that travel disruption may continue this weekend as airlines recover from being hit by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years.

Passengers had their travel plans ruined on Friday as thousands of flights were cancelled internationally after a botched software upgrade hit Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The incident caused havoc across a number of services, with hospital appointments cancelled, payroll systems seized up and TV channels going off air due to the outage.

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Bad actors seizing on Microsoft IT outage to scam public, Clare O’Neil warns

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Home affairs minister says small businesses should be cautious of emails from people posing as CrowdStrike or Microsoft

Scammers are attempting to use the global CrowdStrike outage on Microsoft Windows systems to steal from small businesses by offering fake fixes, the Australian government has warned.

The world has begun to recover from a global outage of Windows systems running the cybersecurity company Crowdstrike’s software, after the company issued a faulty update. But bad actors have seized upon the crisis to attempt to scam the public, the home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, said on Saturday.

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Microsoft IT outage: Australian airlines, banks and supermarkets begin return to normal operations

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IT support staff need to implement the fix in person, one computer at a time, experts have said

Supermarkets, banks, airlines and industries across Australia are slowly recovering on Saturday morning from the massive global Windows outage caused by a CrowdStrike software update gone wrong, with experts warning it could take weeks to resolve.

On Friday morning, the CEO of the Texas-based cybersecurity company, George Kurtz, apologised for the outage, and said it was not a cyber-attack, but a software update issue on its cloud-based cybersecurity platform Falcon for Microsoft Windows. It had since been fixed.

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Microsoft Windows IT outage: over 2,000 flights canceled across US; Fedex and UPS report service delays – live

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Microsoft says cause of global chaos fixed; CrowdStrike CEO ‘deeply sorry’ but services may take days to recover as major disruptions unfold across US

The deputy spokesperson for New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, said that “critical infrastructure and emergency operations, including the 911 call system, have not been impacted”.

In a series of tweets, Fabien Levy wrote:

As this outage only affects Windows-based devices receiving automatic updates, our team at@NYCOfficeofTech has been working for the last few hours to halt any automatic updates and minimize potential service disruptions.”

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US transportation, police and hospital systems stricken by global CrowdStrike IT outage

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US wakes up to Microsoft system collapse from software update that has crippled world IT systems

Thousands of air passengers were stranded across the US on Friday morning and police and hospital systems were left struggling as a global IT outage grounded major domestic airlines and struck rail services, shipping and police emergency systems, as well as some hospital functions.

Technology systems using both Microsoft’s Windows and CrowdStrike cybersecurity software were hit by the outage, after a CrowdStrike update installed faulty software in computers running Windows.

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‘Bedlam’ in UK as air and rail travel hit by global IT outage

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More than 3,000 flights cancelled worldwide after problem affecting Microsoft Windows

Passengers have described “bedlam” at UK airport check-ins after a global IT outage on what was due to be the busiest day for flying since the start of the Covid pandemic, while train networks have also been disrupted.

More than 3,000 flights have been cancelled worldwide after Microsoft Windows operating systems used by airlines, airports and some air traffic systems were affected.

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Slow recovery from IT outage begins as experts warn of future risks

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Fault in CrowdStrike caused airports, businesses and healthcare services to languish in ‘largest outage in history’

Services began to come back online on Friday evening after an IT failure that wreaked havoc worldwide. But full recovery could take weeks, experts have said, after airports, healthcare services and businesses were hit by the “largest outage in history”.

Flights and hospital appointments were cancelled, payroll systems seized up and TV channels went off air after a botched software upgrade hit Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

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Microsoft outage: how Australian airports, banks and supermarkets are affected by a major IT meltdown

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Home affairs minister Clare O’Neil says outage will take “some time to resolve” following problems caused by a CrowdStrike cybersecurity software update

The Australian government has warned a global IT outage that threw major businesses including airports, banks, supermarkets and media outlets into chaos on Friday could still take “some time to resolve”.

The government activated a National Coordination Mechanism meeting of emergency authorities as well as representatives from the major supermarkets, banks, airlines and other key industries on Friday night to respond after Windows workstations were hit by the “blue screen of death”.

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Nvidia hits $3tn and surpasses Apple as world’s second most valuable company

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AI chipmaker’s stock has surged 147% so far in 2024, underscoring shift in tech world as demand for its processors far outstrip supply

Shares of Nvidia rallied to record highs on Wednesday, with the artificial-intelligence chipmaker’s stock market valuation hitting the $3tn mark and overtaking Apple to become the world’s second most valuable company.

The chipmaker’s stock was up 5.16% at $1,224.40, giving Nvidia a market value of $3.01tn at market close. Apple’s market capitalization was at $3.00tn at market close as its stock climbed 0.78%.

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Microsoft’s heavy bet on AI pays off as it beats expectations in second quarter

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World’s largest public company reports $61.86bn revenue after investing billions into artificial intelligence

Profits at Microsoft beat Wall Street’s expectations as its heavy bet on artificial intelligence continued to bear fruit in the second quarter.

The technology giant has invested billions of dollars into AI in a bid to turbocharge its growth, particularly of its cloud computing services. Its cloud computing revenue surged by more than 20% in the latest quarter.

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China will use AI to disrupt elections in the US, South Korea and India, Microsoft warns

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Beijing did a test run in Taiwan using AI-generated content to influence voters away from a pro-sovereignty candidate

China will attempt to disrupt elections in the US, South Korea and India this year with artificial intelligence-generated content after making a dry run with the presidential poll in Taiwan, Microsoft has warned.

The US tech firm said it expected Chinese state-backed cyber groups to target high-profile elections in 2024, with North Korea also involved, according to a report by the company’s threat intelligence team published on Friday.

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US reprimands Microsoft for security failures that allowed Chinese hack

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Federal report says ‘cascade of errors’ by tech giant let Chinese operators break into senior government officials’ email accounts

In a scathing indictment of Microsoft corporate security and transparency, a Biden administration-appointed review board issued a report Tuesday saying “a cascade of errors” by the tech giant let state-backed Chinese cyber operators break into email accounts of senior US officials including commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo.

The Cyber Safety Review Board, created in 2021 by executive order, describes shoddy cybersecurity practices, a lax corporate culture and a lack of sincerity about the company’s knowledge of the targeted breach, which affected multiple US agencies that deal with China.

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