A massive global IT outage caused by an issue with Microsoft has impacted various companies across the world, including broadcasters, airlines and more.
Many entities using Microsoft’s software products experienced the ominous “blue screen of death,” or BSOD, that was caused by a security update that was faulty.
The update, which came from a giant in the security industry called CrowdStrike, ended up forcing many servers and PCs into a boot loop that was unrecoverable. The company was able to roll back the change since then, but that still left many of the machines that used the software significantly affected.
In a pinned post that they posted on Reddit, CrowdStrike wrote:
“We have widespread reports of BSODs on windows hosts, occurring on multiple sensor versions. [We have] identified a content deployment related to this issue and reverted those changes.”
CrowdStrike also posted information about how users could initiate a workaround to the problem. Users had to boot up the Windows operating system into what’s known as Safe Mode, and then deleted a driver.
Some international airlines such as Frontier and Delta had to ground all flights due to the issue. The problem also impacted the Sky broadcasting network based out of the UK as well as the London Stock Exchange.
Many company officials posted on the Reddit thread, saying that their businesses effectively went offline completely as a result of the security problem. As one user posted, according a Yahoo News report:
“Even if [CrowdStrike] fixed the issue causing the BSOD, I’m thinking how are we going to restore the thousands of devices that are not booting up.”
Another user wrote:
“Let me explain to someone who is not tech savvy and is working from home how to boot their machine into safe mode.”
IT managers who are located in the Czech Republic, India, Japan, Malaysia, Australia and many other countries also chimed in on how the issue was affecting their company. One of these users wrote:
“Here in the Philippines, specifically in my employer, it is like Thanos snapped his fingers. Half of the entire organization [is] down due to BSOD loop. Started at 2pm and is still ongoing. What a Friday.”
George Kurtz, who is the CEO of CrowdStrike, publicly acknowledged the issue in a post he made to the social media platform X. He wrote that the issue was caused by a defect that was present in one of the content updates it had for Windows hosts.
It wasn’t a “security incident or cyberattack,” he wrote, adding, “the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
Kurtz didn’t mention whether that fix would be usable on a machine that was still unfortunately experiencing the boot loop.
Hosts that were running either Linux or Mac-based programs were not affected by the issue.
Based in the U.S., CrowdStrike is a security company that provides protection in real-time against cybersecurity threats that corporations face.