CrowdStrike, a leading US cybersecurity company with over 20,000 subscription customers worldwide, is facing significant issues due to a malfunction in its widely used “Falcon Sensor” software.
According to an alert sent by CrowdStrike to its clients, the software is causing Microsoft Windows systems to crash and display the infamous Blue Screen of Death.
The alert, sent at 0530 GMT on Friday, included a manual workaround to address the problem.
Why the problem will persist for days
Omer Grossman, Chief Information Officer at identity security firm CyberArk, commented on the situation: “The damage to business processes at the global level is dramatic. The glitch is due to a software update of CrowdStrike’s EDR product.”
EDR, or Endpoint Detection and Response, is a cybersecurity product installed on clients’ computers to protect against hackers. This software, which operates in the background on endpoints, is used by cybersecurity firms to monitor and defend clients’ networks from attacks.
Grossman explained, “Because the endpoints have crashed — the Blue Screen of Death — they cannot be updated remotely. The problem must be resolved manually, endpoint by endpoint, which is expected to take days.”
The outage
The global tech outage has disrupted operations across various sectors, including Spanish airports, US airlines, and Australian media and banks. Governments in Australia, New Zealand, and several US states are experiencing issues, while American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Air have grounded flights due to communication problems.
In Britain, Sky News, one of the major television news channels, went off air on Friday.
Grossman emphasized the widespread impact, stating, “With the move to the cloud and companies owning huge market shares, their software is running on millions of computers around the world. The damage to business processes at the global level is dramatic.”
