Widespread Outage: CrowdStrike Update Affects 8.5 Million Windows Users

by do son · July 21, 2024

Issues with the software update from CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. impacted 8.5 million devices worldwide running the Microsoft Windows operating system. Representatives from Microsoft Corp. clarified that the affected devices constitute less than 1% of all Windows users, yet the repercussions were significant.

“We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines. While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,” Microsoft explained in its blog.

The erroneous update resulted in a global disruption of businesses and government agencies, paralyzing their operations for several hours. Emergency communication lines were interrupted, thousands of flights were delayed or canceled, hospitals were forced to postpone procedures, and financial markets experienced slowdowns.

The CrowdStrike update caused a blue screen of death on Windows devices, forcing them into an infinite reboot loop, and rendering them unusable. The error was traced to a configuration file change that triggered a logical error and system crash. Although CrowdStrike released a fix, devices caught in the reboot loop were unable to connect to the internet to download the update. The solution involved manually removing the problematic file in safe mode or Windows recovery mode. In some cases, multiple Windows reboots, up to 15 times, also helped.

CrowdStrike’s stock price plummeted, and the company suffered massive financial losses. In 2024, the company was also involved in several other major deals and continued to actively collaborate with government agencies.