Crowdstrike CEO apologizes for global technical outage after company implements fix
Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike has implemented a fix for an issue that caused a major technical outage impacting industries including aviation, banking and healthcare around the world, the company’s CEO said on Friday.
Microsoft separately said it had fixed the underlying cause of the outages across its 365 apps and services, including Teams and OneDrive, but that there were still residual effects across some services.
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been implemented,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said in a post on social media platform X.
According to Kurtz, the problem was caused by a defect found in a single content update for Microsoft Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts were not affected by the problem.
Shares of CrowdStrike fell nearly 12% in premarket trading, while Microsoft fell 1.4%.
A massive IT outage disrupted operations across multiple sectors on Friday, with major airlines halting flights, some broadcasters off the air, and sectors ranging from banking to healthcare hit by system failures.
“We deeply regret the impact this has caused to customers, travelers and everyone affected, including our company,” Kurtz told NBC News’ “Today” program.
“A lot of customers are rebooting their systems and it’s coming and it’s going to be operational,” Kurtz said. “It may take a while for some systems to recover automatically.”
CrowdStrike’s “Falcon Sensor” software caused Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, informally known as the “Blue Screen of Death,” according to an alert CrowdStrike previously sent to its customers and seen by Reuters.
The travel industry has been one of the hardest hit sectors, with airports around the world reporting delays and system network issues, while banks and financial institutions from Australia and India to South Africa warned customers of service disruptions.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
