Crowdstrike Strikes Down Banks & Airlines After Updating Microsoft Computers

CrowdStrike Logo

This is really bad. I was witnessing chaos amongst my fellow travelers (I am thankfully not in the air right now), & it appears that Crowdstirke's update to Microsoft powered machines is resulting in Blue Screens Of Death across numerous airports, banks, & various other businesses worldwide.

Businesses worldwide are experiencing widespread outages, including Windows “blue screen of death” errors, many of them said Friday. The problems are affecting various sectors, from banks, food chains, brokerage houses, news organizations to airlines.

Many customers have reported being unable to restart their computers due to the issue. This outage comes shortly after Microsoft confirmed service problems with its Microsoft 365 apps late Thursday, which affected several airlines including Delta and United. (TechCrunch)

I came across this info via @TechCrunch@flipboard.com & @techcrunch@threads.net & the problem is worse than what people are realizing. Here is a report from @verge@mastodon.social with more details regarding this outage and a potential solution for businesses attempting to fix (albeit temporarily) the issue & save themselves from massive downtime.

The US Federal Aviation Administration says all flights from Delta, United, and American Airlines are grounded due to a “communication issue.” Berlin airport is also warning of travel delays due to “technical issues.” Many 911 emergency call centers in Alaska have also been impacted by the issues.

“We have widespread reports of BSODs on Windows hosts, occurring on multiple sensor versions,” says CrowdStrike in a support note issued at 1:20AM ET today. CrowdStrike has identified the issue and reverted the faulty update, but that doesn't appear to help machines that have already been impacted.

In a Reddit thread, hundreds of IT admins are reporting widespread issues and the workaround steps involve booting affected Windows machines into safe mode and navigating to the CrowdStrike directory and deleting a system file. That will be troublesome on some cloud-based servers, or even for Windows laptops that are deployed and used remotely. (The Verge)

Although I no longer use Windows Machines (my iPad Pro is my computer now), virtually every company I know (including the one I work for) does, which means it is probably chaos in corporate America 🇺🇸 right now.

As far as the financial markets go, investors are punishing both CrowdStrike & Microsoft in pre-market trading right now.

Businesses would be wise to consider alternatives to Microsoft to avoid a similar fiasco in the future.

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