This past Friday, global industries, including the banking industry and airlines across the world, were brought to a standstill due to a faulty update.
Airlines were unable to fly, banking apps were not working, and companies all across the world were unable to turn on their computers.
Even hospitals had to cancel surgeries. Most shockingly, some emergency operators were unable to respond to crises – 911 lines were down in several parts of the country.
But what exactly happened? You may have heard that it was all due to a Crowdstrike update, but what is Crowdstrike, what does it do, and how did it have the power to enact carnage on such a global scale?
An Overview: What Happened?
Sometime late Thursday night or early Friday morning, hundreds of thousands of Windows computers across the world went offline.
Stuck with a “Blue Screen of Death,” they were unable to reboot, effectively bringing much of the world to a halt.
Travelers found themselves stranded at airports, while doctors were unable to access patient information.
This was all caused by a faulty update that was automatically rolled out to Windows computers across the world.
However, the issue didn’t actually have anything to do with Windows itself, despite media headlines suggesting as such.
Instead, it had to do with a security/antivirus software that many companies used on their Windows devices called Crowdstrike.
Author’s Note: if your machine, or one that you support, is currently impacted by this outage check out this Crowdstrike Remediation Guide for instructions on how to fix this issue.
What Is Crowdstrike, and What Does It Do?
Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity technology company that makes software to help companies stay in compliance and protect their computers from cybersecurity threats and hackers.
It’s a pretty popular software – many companies across the world use it because it helps them remain in compliance with security regulations.
How Did Crowdstrike’s Update Paralyze So Many Computers?
Crowdstrike released an update that was automatically deployed to Windows machines using its software.
The problem is that Crowdstrike’s software interacts pretty closely with the operating system. That makes it very secure and difficult to bypass, but in this case, it served as a detriment.
Crowdstrike released an update with a faulty driver that prevented Windows computers from being able to boot.
And, since Crowdstrike is so closely integrated with the operating system, it was impossible for people to just log into Windows and delete this faulty file.
Instead, users would have to boot up their computers using a special troubleshooting process instead of using the regular boot process and delete the file.
However, regular employees don’t usually know how to do this, since it requires some technical knowledge.
Instead, the IT department would have to do this manually on every computer owned by every employee. As you can imagine, that’s a lot of work!
However, that’s not all. As an added security measure, many companies use something called Bitlocker.
This locks the hard drive and prevents a random employee from just booting up the computer and deleting files on their own whim.
Bitlocker requires a special key to unlock it, but this key is administered by the server that the IT department uses to manage all the workstations (employee computers) in the company.
And, herein lies the big problem. Many server computers also used Crowdstrike, which meant that the IT departments in many companies were unable to even boot up the servers! Without the servers, there was no way to unlock employee computers.
That means that IT departments had to come up with workarounds, which we won’t discuss, as they are pretty technical in nature.
However, the point is that this took at least a few hours for system administrators in many companies to figure out.
There is another factor that wasn’t discussed but which I want to point out. With the rise of remote work, many companies have staff working remotely, which meant that the IT department had to coach employees on how to fix their computers.
That’s because the issue had to be fixed manually on every computer! This wasn’t something that IT departments can just fix remotely.
And, once again, with companies that have hundreds of thousands of computers, that took a lot of time!
Not only that, but IT departments are increasingly becoming outsourced overseas, which further complicated the issue.
What Happens Next
The issue has been mostly fixed by now. Crowdstrike has issued an official fix to the problem, and IT administrators across the world have figured out ways to get the servers back up.
However, there has been a lot of discussion on how this could even happen in the first place. Obviously, something had gone wrong with the testing processes at Crowdstrike.
Besides Crowdstrike’s stock going into free fall, we are likely going to see a reckoning in the IT industry.
Crowdstrike may release a tool that would help companies get back on track if such issues happen in the future, but IT departments may also work on solutions that would prevent them from being completely paralyzed if such updates happen again.
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