Photo: Getty Images
Last Friday, a faulty update by cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike caused Windows systems all over the world to crash.
In an update by Microsoft, it says that the problem affected “8.5 million Windows devices or less than one percent of all Windows machines".
Separately, CrowdStrike has also explained that the problem was caused by a problematic configuration file for customers running the Falcon sensor. It said:
On July 19, 2024 at 04:09 UTC, as part of ongoing operations, CrowdStrike released a sensor configuration update to Windows systems. Sensor configuration updates are an ongoing part of the protection mechanisms of the Falcon platform. This configuration update triggered a logic error resulting in a system crash and blue screen (BSOD) on impacted systems.
Although the fault only affected a small percentage of Windows devices, it had a widespread impact on the world. Thousands of flights were delayed or cancelled, businesses went offline, hospitals couldn’t access patient data, news publications couldn’t broadcast, and the list goes on.
Microsoft concedes this in its post too, saying:
While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services.
To prevent such an incident from occurring again, CrowdStrike said it will be doing “a thorough root cause analysis” to find out how this logic flaw occurred and it will update its findings as the investigation progresses.
Source: Microsoft, CrowdStrike
Note: To learn more, read our feature covering the incident here.
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