Airlines grounded flights. Operators of 911 lines could not respond to emergencies. Hospitals canceled surgeries. Retailers closed for the day. And the actions all traced back to a batch of bad computer code.
The NYTimes reports a flawed software update sent out by a little-known cybersecurity company caused chaos and disruption around the world on Friday. The company, CrowdStrike, based in Austin, Texas, makes software used by multinational corporations, government agencies and scores of other organizations to protect against hackers and online intruders.
But when CrowdStrike sent its update on Thursday to its customers that run Microsoft Windows software, computers began to crash.
The fallout, which was immediate and inescapable, highlighted the brittleness of global technology infrastructure. The world has become reliant on Microsoft and a handful of cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike. So when a single flawed piece of software is released over the internet, it can almost instantly damage countless companies and organizations that depend on the technology as part of everyday business.
A cyberattack did not cause the widespread outage, but the effects on Friday showed how devastating the damage can be when a main artery of the global technology system is disrupted. It raised broader questions about CrowdStrike’s testing processes and what repercussions such software firms should face when flaws in their code cause major disruptions.
While outages are common, often caused by technical errors or cyberattacks, the scale of what unfolded on Friday was unparalleled. “This is historic,” said Mikko Hypponen, the chief research officer at WithSecure, a cybersecurity company. “We haven’t had an incident like this.
EXCLUSIVE: CrowdStrike founder and CEO @George_Kurtz speaks on TODAY about the major computer outages worldwide that started earlier today: “We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this.” pic.twitter.com/fWz6KhgrcZ
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 19, 2024
George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s chief executive, said that the company took responsibility for the mistake and that a software fix had been released. He warned that it could be some time before tech systems returned to normal.
“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this,” he said in an interview on Friday on NBC’s “Today” show.
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