A massive Windows operating system outage caused by a bug in the CrowdStrike antivirus update affected 8.5 million Windows devices. This is less than 1% of all Windows computers.
This was reported by Microsoft Corporation.
Software updates can sometimes lead to computer malfunctions. However, situations like the high-profile crash with CrowdStrike are extremely rare.
Microsoft said that while the percentage of devices affected by the breach was small, the serious economic and social consequences "show that CrowdStrike is being used by organizations that provide critical services." Crowdstrike helped Microsoft develop a solution that would allow them to deal with the situation faster.
According to the BBC, the CrowdStrike failure is one of the worst cyber incidents in history, eclipsing all previous hacks and failures. The closest to it in terms of scale is the WannaCry cyberattack in 2017, which, according to experts, affected about 300 000 computers in 150 countries.
Also in 2021, there was a major six-hour outage at Meta, which runs social networks Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. But this mainly concerned only this company and some related partners.
Windows global failure
A massive worldwide outage began on the morning of July 19. An unusual cascade of outages from the US to Asia came after Microsoft reported problems with its online services, including Azure and 365 online services, which were later revealed to be caused by an update to the CrowdStrike Falcon software for Windows operating systems.
Due to a large-scale technical failure, thousands of flights were canceled around the world. In addition, banks, television and radio broadcasting companies and other organizations suspended their work. To fix problems caused by the CrowdStrike update, Microsoft advised everyone to restart Windows up to 15 times. On July 20, air transportation was fully restored.