Massive Microsoft-Crowdstrike Outage

The massive IT outage that surfaced on Thursday evening impacted thousands of computers worldwide. From aviation to healthcare, several sectors were severely impacted.

CrowdStrike is widely used by many businesses worldwide for managing the security of Windows PCs and servers. The outage resulted from an issue with the latest update, which is causing PCs to crash.

The incident led to disruption in travel, which has been cited as the most prominent consequence of this global IT outage. Hours after the incident, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admitted that a CrowdStrike update impacted the IT systems worldwide. He said that the company was working closely with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue.

The glitch is due to a software update of CrowdStrike's EDR product. This is a product that runs with high privileges that protects endpoints. A malfunction in this can, as we are seeing in the current incident, cause the operating system to crash.

Organizations heavily reliant on Windows systems are facing operational challenges and potential financial losses. A massive tech failure has caused travel chaos around the world, with banking and healthcare services also badly hit. The glitch in CrowdStrike led to delays and cancellations as airlines were struggling to manage check-in, booking, and other routine activities.

CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor. Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bugcheck\blue screen error related to the Falcon Sensor.

Recently, a forum post by a user named 11B-X-1371 has surfaced, claiming responsibility for a significant incident involving Crowdstrike. The post links to an article discussing a faulty update that caused crashes in the Crowdstrike system.

The user claims to represent ART 46, a new hacker group supporting Russia and the Kremlin. According to the post, ART 46 successfully disabled several internet servers of various companies and insists there were no errors on their part. They also urge the West to stop spreading disinformation in pro-NATO media.

Crowdstrike shares plunged as much as 21% in early pre-market trade. Microsoft also lost ground, as did travel and leisure stocks, as investors weighed the potential disruption for holidaymakers.