Quick Info
  • Thousands, if not millions, of Windows machines worldwide have been impacted by the outage causing servers to go out and Windows machines to go into a Blue Screen of Death error.
  • Many businesses across the world have been impacted, including banks, healthcare, supermarkets, airlines, etc.
  • A third-party security service, CrowdStrike, is responsible for this outage on machines using the CrowdStrike Falcon agent.
  • The issue has apparently been identified and a fix has been deployed, but experts say it will take time to fix all the machines.

Major businesses across the world have been impacted as Windows machines and servers have been affected today – including going into a BSOD error at boot – due to an update from CrowdStrike. The issue could reportedly be impacting millions of Windows machines across the world if online chatter is to be believed.

CrowdStrike is used by thousands of businesses worldwide to manage the security of Windows PCs and servers. Many sectors and services have been hit by the outage, including airlines, banks, healthcare, TV broadcasters, and supermarkets, among others.

Airlines and airports across the world seem to have been hit the hardest, from airlines across many countries – the U.S., India, U.K. Singapore, Australia, Germany, France, Japan, and China – facing technical difficulties. IndiGo in India has even been spotted using handwritten boarding passes in the face of this outage.

According to a statement from George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, the error has arisen from a defect in the update for Windows hosts, ruling out the possibility of a cyberattack or a security incident. The issue has not affected Mac or Linux systems.

While CrowdStrike has already reverted the faulty update, that won't help the machines that have already been impacted. They have identified the issue and deployed a fix already but experts are saying it won't be simple for IT admins to fix the issue.

While Microsoft is not at fault here, that is not stopping half the Internet from vilifying the company. Some even say that the company should not allow 3rd party kernel drivers, as an update to the kernel level driver, has caused the massive outage. Microsoft's service status page

CrowdStrike has already provided a potential workaround to solve the problem that involves booting Windows manually into Safe Mode or Windows Recovery Environment and deleting a file from the CrowdStike directory. However, given the scale of the outage, this solution, required to be performed manually on the machine, is less than ideal for IT admins, especially for cloud-based servers or Windows laptops that are used remotely by workers.

While this has been the biggest IT outage in recent years, netizens have spotted a silver lining of the outage occurring on a Friday, with IT employees posting online (humorously) about enjoying a long weekend.