LogInMicrosoft and CrowdStrike are working on it.
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If you didn't know how reliant on Microsoft we all are, here's a case in point. A global Windows glitch caused many organizations in the whole world to stop operating. TV channels, airlines, banks, and other infrastructure paused for a while due to the infamous "blue screen of death."
As reported by The Independent, channels go offline, banks can't process payments, and Windows-based systems don't operate as intended. It has been determined that the issue is related to CrowdStrike's cybersecurity software. Now, the companies work to fix the problem, claiming there was no cyberattack involved.
"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts," said CrowdStrike's CEO George Kurtz. "This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers."
Numerous companies have been affected by the outage, including Sky News, National Australia Bank, American Airlines, Visa, Mastercard, Ryanair, and Amazon, but systems are slowly getting back online, as reported by various outlets.
CrowdStrike's Falcon sensor that monitors computers to detect intrusions might be the problem, according to Toby Murray, associate professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne (via The Independent).
"Falcon is a pretty privileged piece of software in that it is able to influence how the computers it is installed on behave," he said. "If Falcon is suffering a malfunction then it could be causing a widespread outage for two reasons – one: Falcon is widely deployed on many computers, and two: because of Falcon’s privileged nature. ... It is possible that today’s outage may have been caused by a buggy update to Falcon."
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike recommends booting Windows in the Safe Mode and deleting one of the updates to stabilize workflows.
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