A major internet outage caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike disrupted flights, businesses, and government offices worldwide on Friday. The issue, which affected computers running Microsoft Windows, highlighted the fragility of a digitized world dependent on a handful of providers. CrowdStrike reported that the outage started due to a software problem, and while a fix was underway, disruptions continued globally across various industries.
Consumers faced inconvenience, with Starbucks customers struggling to order ahead using the mobile app. Starbucks apologized for the issue but managed to serve customers in most stores and drive-thrus. Health care providers in the U.S., Canada, and England experienced service disruptions.
Some hospitals suspended visits, canceled elective procedures, and paused operations requiring anesthesia. Others reported no significant disruptions to patient care. Air travelers faced significant delays, with airlines such as American Airlines, Delta, United, Spirit, and Allegiant grounding flights temporarily.
The outage affected crucial systems for checking in passengers and calculating aircraft weight. Social media was flooded with images of crowded terminals and frustrated passengers, particularly at airports in Europe and the U.S.
The outage extended to border crossings, causing significant delays for individuals entering the U.S. from both the north and south. At the San Ysidro Port of Entry, pedestrians faced waits of up to three hours, and vehicles with pre-cleared travelers experienced delays of up to 90 minutes.
CrowdStrike, founded in 2011 and launched in 2012, is a U.S. cybersecurity firm providing cloud-based security software to companies worldwide.
internet outage from cybersecurity update
The company is renowned for its advanced security technologies.
According to CrowdStrike, the issue lay in its test software, which allowed an update containing problematic data to be approved. The bug was in the content validator system, causing a Template Instance to pass validation despite containing defective content. When loaded, it resulted in an output that could not be gracefully handled, causing Microsoft Windows operating systems to crash.
CrowdStrike is implementing measures to prevent such incidents in the future, including different kinds of testing, additional validation checks, improved monitoring, and giving customers more control over the delivery of Rapid Response Content updates. The ongoing digital catastrophe appears to have been triggered not by malicious code released by hackers, but by the software designed to stop them. Two internet infrastructure disasters collided on Friday, with Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure experiencing a widespread outage and CrowdStrike releasing a flawed software update that sent Windows computers into a catastrophic reboot spiral.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issues were caused by a “defect” in code the company released for Windows, not a cyberattack. Kurtz apologized for the disruption and said it may take some time for things to return to normal. The root cause of the crash was a single configuration file pushed as an update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon software, aimed at changing how Falcon inspects “named pipes” in Windows.
The update was meant to catch a new method used by hackers for communication between their malware on victim machines and command-and-control servers. Cybersecurity authorities worldwide have issued alerts about the disruption but have ruled out any nefarious activity by hackers. The impact has been sweeping and dramatic, with companies, public bodies, and IT teams racing to fix bricked machines through corrective steps, including rebooting.
The ability of one update to trigger such massive disruption remains puzzling, as CrowdStrike accounts for 14 percent of the security software market by revenue, meaning its software is on a wide array of systems.
