An error in a CrowdStrike update caused a major disruption to Windows PCs in several countries, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, and South Africa. Emergency services, airports, and law enforcement experienced downtime as a result. The issue, which led to the infamous Blue Screen of Death, was not a security incident or cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike. Affected organizations, including American Airlines, United, Delta, and Microsoft 365, have been working to resolve the issue. CrowdStrike made up 14.74% of the total software revenue for security software segments and regions in 2023, with Microsoft making 40.16%. Organizations affected by the outage are advised to restart Azure Virtual Machines running the CrowdStrike Falcon agent or restore from a backup earlier than July 18 at 04:09 UTC. Given the widespread impact of the incident, businesses are encouraged to stay in touch with their SaaS partners and avoid falling victim to misinformation. It is important for organizations to have a strong recovery process in place and to support their IT teams during such disruptions. CrowdStrike has directed inquiries to their official statement, and additional updates will be provided as more information becomes available.
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