Many thousands of Windows computers are showing the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) at boot today, impacting banks, airlines, TV broadcasters, supermarkets and many more businesses worldwide, according to reports. A faulty Windows security update from CrowdStrike knocked affected PCs and servers offline, forcing them into a recovery boot loop so machines can’t start properly. Note that the outage, causing headaches for IT admins everywhere, does not affect Mac or Linux machines.
Faulty CrowdStrike update takes down Windows PCs and servers globally
CrowdStrike, used by businesses globally to manage the security of Windows PCs and servers, acknowledged the problem and deployed a fix, according to reports in The Verge, NBC News and elsewhere. Australian banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters first raised the alarm as thousands of machines started to go offline. The issues spread quickly as businesses based in Europe began their workday. And soon after businesses in the United States began encountering problems, including major airlines like United, American and Delta, all of which grounded flights.
UK broadcaster Sky News was unable to air its morning news bulletins for hours, displaying an apology for “the interruption to this broadcast.” Ryanair, one of Europe’s largest airlines, reported experiencing a “third-party” IT issue affecting flight departures.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is assisting airlines with communications problems. Berlin airport is warning of travel delays, and 911 emergency call centers in Alaska have been impacted. One airline in India has resorted to handwritten boarding passes due to the outages.
Faulty CrowdStrike security update, not a cyberattack
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz confirms no security incident or cyberattack occurred. The issue causing #Microsoft 365 outages has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed. Services should be restored soon. @TNIEBiz @santwana99 pic.twitter.com/4Cbz2071bo
— Rakesh Kumar (@rakeshhkumar) July 19, 2024
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz stated on X, “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.”
While CrowdStrike has identified the issue and deployed a fix, resolving the problem on affected machines will be challenging for IT admins. The root cause appears to be an update to the kernel level driver that CrowdStrike uses to secure Windows machines, according to reports.
IT admins are sharing workarounds on Reddit, which involve booting affected Windows machines into safe mode and deleting a system file in the CrowdStrike directory. This process may be particularly troublesome for cloud-based servers and remotely deployed Windows laptops.
In an unrelated incident, Microsoft is recovering from several issues with its Microsoft 365 apps and services. “A configuration change in a portion of our Azure backend workloads” caused the problem, the company said.
As the situation continues to unfold, it’s worth reiterating that Mac users remain unaffected by this widespread Windows-specific outage.
