The world woke up on Friday to news of a global cyber crash that left thousands of flights grounded, airports in chaos, customers unable to access their accounts through banking apps, unable to pay for products and services with credit cards, and patients unable to see doctors or have operations.
Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike admitted that a “flaw” in a Windows software update was the cause of the outage, and its CEO George Kurtz said engineers were working to resolve the issue, finding a solution as quickly as possible.
Crowdstrike launched in 2012 as a cybersecurity firm with “the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform” for detecting and blocking hacking threats. The company serves about 300 Fortune 500 companies, as well as major technology and automotive companies and healthcare providers.
Company CEO George Kurtz said the outage was caused by a faulty Windows patch (a patch is a small piece of software that is used to update or improve a program to fix a security vulnerability).
Mac and Linux PCs were not affected. This was not a security incident or a cyberattack. The issue involved a Windows update to the Falcon Sensor software, which caused the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), an error message that Windows systems typically display when a computer stops working.
On X, Kurtz questioned why the patch was not tested before it was released worldwide. User David Hajek (@hajekd) responded to Kurtz’s statement, saying, “We screwed up and we’re sorry.” Many users chimed in to demand an apology to users who were affected by the computer crash.
After the incident, the company suffered a sharp loss in its share price and revenue: early trading on Friday wiped 20% – estimated at around $16 billion (€14.7 billion) – from its valuation.
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