Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

On Friday 19 July 2024, CrowdStrike suffered a serious outage in which over 8.5 million computers were taken offline. Whilst it may have first appeared to be a cyber-attack, it was actually a faulty update to CrowdStrike Falcon which led to computers crashing to a blue screen on boot. Many organisations were affected, and in some cases were unable to access computer systems for multiple hours.

The blue screen of death (BSOD) triggered on July 19, 2024, in Windows environments worldwide was caused by a faulty update of the CrowdStrike Falcon Senor’s Endpoint Detection and Response component.

In the early morning of July 19, a software update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor started to cause one of the most extensive IT outages in history, affecting several industry sectors, including financial services, healthcare, transportation, and others. According to CrowdStrike, the outage stemmed from “a defect found in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts.” At this point, the software update has not affected Mac and Linux systems.

SenseOn is a direct competitor to CrowdStrike. On 19th July 2024 BST, an update to CrowdStrike endpoint software caused worldwide IT outages that resulted in over 8 million Windows devices being disabled. This caused major disruption to organisations in a range of industries, including aviation and healthcare. Quality assurance gaps and deployment processes were not the only factors, or even the most significant factors, in the widespread disruption.

On July 19, 2024, a botched CrowdStrike Falcon sensor update for Windows operating systems led to the largest IT outage in recent history. Although the issue stemmed from a technical malfunction, it inadvertently opened the door for real threat actors to exploit the situation. This incident has triggered a wave of malicious activities, particularly targeting CrowdStrike’s Latin American (LATAM) customers.

On July 19, 2024, CrowdStrike, a global cybersecurity company, experienced a significant outage caused by a faulty software update. This incident impacted millions of Windows machines across multiple industries, including transportation, defense, manufacturing, and finance. CrowdStrike has released an official statement and is posting updates on their blog. Microsoft has also published a blog with remediations, which we encourage you to review.

In the early morning hours of Friday, July 19, a single software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike sparked an unprecedented global IT outage. The incident continues to impact organizations, governments, and end users around the world, disrupting everything from mission-critical infrastructure and airlines to hospitals, retailers, and more. We at 11:11 Systems understand the gravity of this unfortunate situation and want to wish all of those affected a quick and complete recovery.

By now, everyone is aware of the CrowdStrike Falcon update that caused major disruptions to key services such as hospitals, flights, news channels, and millions of end-user and cloud-based Windows machines worldwide. Details, including recovery options, can be found in the CrowdStrike advisory. At Indusface, designing for failure is a core tenet that we use while building all our SaaS products. After all, despite the best processes, checks, and balances, any system can fail.

Earlier today, CrowdStrike released a new update on their Falcon Sensor product. Unfortunately, the update caused technical issues, resulting in major outages globally to Microsoft Windows machines. The issue caused the “Blue Screen of Death” and several reports worldwide stated that several industries were affected, such as airlines, banks, media, etc. According to CrowdStrike Tech Alert, they are already aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the CrowdStrike Sensors.