On the morning of July 19, a significant number of Windows PCs experienced a major outage, impacting businesses globally. Sectors such as banking, aviation, transportation, media, and emergency services were affected as organizations were unable to access their work computers. The outage even led to airlines resorting to handwritten boarding passes due to disrupted airport operations.
The issue is attributed to a buggy update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity provider responsible for detecting and responding to cyber threats. The affected businesses rely on CrowdStrike’s Falcon threat checker, which became inoperable due to this incident. CrowdStrike has acknowledged the problem and suggested troubleshooting solutions such as starting Windows in Safe Mode, deleting a specific file in the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike folder, and restarting the computer normally.
Although the buggy update has been rolled back, affected businesses still face the challenge of manually fixing thousands of computers. This process is time-consuming and poses a significant challenge for large organizations.
