How a software update from cyber firm CrowdStrike caused one of the world’s biggest IT blackouts (2024)

FAQs

How a software update from cyber firm CrowdStrike caused one of the world’s biggest IT blackouts? ›

The issue stemmed from a problem in CrowdStrike's Falcon product, leading to devices running Windows operating systems to crash with the "blue screen of death." The company is currently working to roll back the problematic update. Microsoft clarified that their prior cloud service outage was unrelated.

The CrowdStrike outage was caused by a coding update that went wrong. This incident highlights the dangers of poor IT and cyber security practices. Businesses are becoming focused on pushing out updates faster, particularly to address dynamic cyber threats, and reducing IT costs.

The detailed PIR document explains how a fault in the software that tests updates was responsible for the outage affecting millions of Windows machines. Many in the industry say the issue could have been avoided with more testing—and it looks like CrowdStrike will now need to test the testing software.

Last week's global tech outage has been traced back to a bug in U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike's quality control system. The outage's impacts have been far-reaching, affecting roughly 8.5 million Windows devices and disrupting banks, emergency call centers and airlines.

Indeed, CrowdStrike says the “problematic Rapid Response Content configuration update resulted in a Windows system crash.” “When received by the sensor and loaded into the Content Interpreter, problematic content in Channel File 291 resulted in an out-of-bounds memory read triggering an exception,” CrowdStrike writes.

Shares of cybersecurity company CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) continue to drop on Tuesday after its major software update problem of more than a week ago. The stock was already down more than 30% from recent highs, and investors might have thought that the worst was over once the problem had been corrected.

CrowdStrike delivers security content configuration updates to our sensors in two ways: Sensor Content that is shipped with our sensor directly, and Rapid Response Content that is designed to respond to the changing threat landscape at operational speed.

The extent of the impact on federal government operations is still not known. Crowdstrike is in wide use across federal agencies and it is a key vendor on the governmentwide Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation cybersecurity support services contract.

CrowdStrike® Incident Response Services delivers immediate threat visibility and active threat containment to eject adversaries from your network and recover your systems with speed and precision.

Based on 36 Wall Street analysts offering 12 month price targets for CrowdStrike Holdings in the last 3 months. The average price target is $368.26 with a high forecast of $450.00 and a low forecast of $275.00. The average price target represents a 43.76% change from the last price of $256.16.

How much did the CrowdStrike outage cost? ›

The massive CrowdStrike outage that affected millions of Microsoft devices is predicted to cost U.S. Fortune 500 companies $5.4 billion in total direct financial loss, with an average loss of $44 million per Fortune 500 company, according to new data from cloud monitoring and insurance firm Parametrix.

The outage began July 19 after an update to CrowdStrike's Falcon platform set off a “blue screen of death” scenario for 8.5 million devices worldwide. Global impacts ensued for air travel, health care and business, and experts have called it the largest IT outage of all time.

The historic outage was the result of a faulty update from the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike that affected millions of computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. Laura DeNardis is a professor and endowed Chair in Technology, Ethics, and Society and the director of the Center for Digital Ethics.

There was a logic flaw in Falcon sensor version 7.11 and above, causing it to crash. Due to CrowdStrike Falcon's tight integration into the Microsoft Windows kernel, it resulted in a Windows system crash and BSOD.

The ownership structure of CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD) stock is a mix of institutional, retail and individual investors. Approximately 44.34% of the company's stock is owned by Institutional Investors, 2.19% is owned by Insiders and 53.47% is owned by Public Companies and Individual Investors.

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas. It provides endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.

Average Price Target

Based on 36 Wall Street analysts offering 12 month price targets for CrowdStrike Holdings in the last 3 months. The average price target is $368.26 with a high forecast of $450.00 and a low forecast of $275.00. The average price target represents a 43.76% change from the last price of $256.16.

CrowdStrike is a web/cloud based anti-virus which uses very little storage space on your machine. CrowdStrike installs a lightweight sensor on your machine that is less than 5MB and is completely invisible to the end user.

CrowdStrike's core technology, the Falcon platform, stops breaches by preventing and responding to all types of attacks — both malware and malware-free.