Recent IT Meltdown: CrowdStrike Update Causes Global Chaos, Predicted Hours Earlier on Reddit

Only a few times in history has a single piece of code instantly wreaked havoc on computer systems globally. Examples include the Slammer worm of 2003, Russia’s NotPetya cyberattack targeting Ukraine, and North Korea’s WannaCry ransomware. However, the recent digital catastrophe over the past 12 hours wasn’t caused by hackers, but by the software meant to protect against them.

Two major internet infrastructure issues converged on Friday, causing widespread disruptions across airports, train systems, banks, healthcare organizations, hotels, and television stations. The trouble began on Thursday night with a widespread outage on Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure. By Friday morning, things worsened when CrowdStrike released a flawed software update, causing Windows computers to reboot repeatedly. Microsoft stated that the two failures are unrelated.

The cause of one disaster was identified: a faulty update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon monitoring product. This antivirus platform, which requires deep system access, aims to detect malware and suspicious activity. However, the update inadvertently caused the system to crash. Mikko Hyppönen of WithSecure noted that this is unprecedented in its global impact, although similar issues were more common in the past due to worms or trojans.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz explained that the problem was due to a defect in the code released for Windows, leaving Mac and Linux systems unaffected. A fix

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