The problem with being a popular service is that one small error can have widespread effects, as witnessed by the recent Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage. Early on Friday, thousands of Microsoft users found their systems refusing to start up, an unnerving blue screen staring right back at them. News of the Windows outage began to spread as numerous businesses came to a grinding halt once they were unable to boot the systems that were critical to running their services smoothly. Before we received updates on the global outage, users were filled with the fear of a large-scale cyberattack or some kind of dangerous bug that had crashed their system permanently.
After initial outage reports began to spread, CrowdStrike took the fall for the incident. CEO George Kurtz stated that the company was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.” Many systems have recovered since the announcement, but it could be some time before things go back to normal for everyone.
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Microsoft-CrowdStrike Outage Caused One of the Biggest Global IT Blackouts
In our electricity-powered world, we’re heavily reliant on computers for all of our extensive processing needs. From writing the articles that go into the news reports physically and virtually to relying on electronics to run every single element of our airports, computers have a critical role to play in our lives, as evidenced by the repercussions of the global IT outage that took out everything from flights to banks.
The Microsoft-CrowdStrike outage has been discussed as one of the largest IT outages in history. Even 911 services were down as a result of the outage and regions like Alaska were forced to turn to platforms like Facebook to inform citizens about alternate numbers they could contact in an emergency. According to CBS News, over 3,000 flights across the U.S. were canceled by Friday night and more than 11,400 were delayed. Over 42,000 flights were delayed globally due to technical difficulties caused by the outage. The skies might have enjoyed the break from the air traffic but it has likely been a harrowing day for travelers stuck inside and outside airports.
Many hospitals were forced to turn to paper files for their hospital records and reschedule surgeries to ensure no problems arose during the procedure. While many officegoers were delighted to hear that systems were down and there was no work to be done at their workplace, the Microsoft-Crowdstrike outage was a major problem for almost everyone else. Microsoft has received some bad press recently over their AI choices, but this time, the negative outcome is quite unfortunate.
CrowdStrike Outage Report—Has a Solution Been Found?
Despite the “blue screen of death” striking so many devices, many services have largely been restored. The problem was caused by a problem in the latest Microsoft update, where an error with CrowdStrike’s software caused the systems to struggle with turning on. The company is an antivirus provider for Microsoft and its services are deeply integrated into the Windows system software, which is why the entire system faced a problem rather than just a flaw in one element of it.
Yesterday, CrowdStrike released an update that began impacting IT systems globally. We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) July 19, 2024
Microsoft introduced the option for customers to restore the system to a prior version of the system without the bug, which allowed many users to restore the full functioning of their devices. The company guided users to complete a “Point-in-time restore” to go back to a period up to 24 hours before the CrowdStrike update occurred.
The updated Microsoft blog also has instructions on how to “remove the C-00000291*.sys file on the disk directly” to address the issue. If the problem is still not resolved, customers can also attempt to repair the OS disk, but these last two solutions are a little more complicated than the understanding of an average consumer.
CrowdStrike Makes a Statement on the Global IT Outage
The tech company released a full statement on the situation, “The outage was caused by a defect found in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This was not a cyberattack.” They reiterated that a sensor configuration update to Windows triggered a logical error which resulted in the overall issue, but the update has been remediated now. The company is still investigating how the logic flaw occurred but everyone’s focus is currently set on ensuring all systems return to normal.
“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.”
—CrowdStrike Blog
How to fix your computer if you are affected by the crowdstrike crash pic.twitter.com/a9fEOzthad
— timshady (@timshadyeth) July 19, 2024
As CrowdStrike continues to work with customers and partners to resolve this incident, our team has written a technical overview of today’s events. We will continue to update our findings as the investigation progresses. https://t.co/xIDlV7yKVh
— George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 20, 2024
Microsoft has alerted users to the fact that they might have to restart their systems up to 15 times before it goes back to normal and for persisting issues, customers will have to reach out to CrowdStrike for additional assistance. Considering the scale of the problem, it will be a while before every single affected system is fully restored.