Global IT Outages Linked to CrowdStrike Software Update
George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, Provides Reassurance
On July 19, businesses around the world faced IT outages, including the ‘Windows blue screen of death.’ CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, identified a software update as the cause. George Kurtz, President and CEO of CrowdStrike, confirmed that the issue was not a security incident or cyberattack and has been fixed.
Steps to Mitigate the Issue
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issued an advisory to address the outage. They recommended the following steps:
- Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment.
- Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike and locate the file matching the pattern ‘C-00000291*.sys’.
- Delete the identified file and reboot the host normally.
Users are advised to check the CrowdStrike Support Portal for the latest updates.
Impact on Various Sectors
The outage affected companies across multiple sectors, including airlines, banks, food chains, brokerage houses, news organizations, and railway networks. The travel industry experienced significant flight delays worldwide.
Doubts Revealed
CrowdStrike -: CrowdStrike is a company that helps protect computers and networks from bad people trying to break in and cause problems.
CEO -: CEO stands for Chief Executive Officer. This is the person who is in charge of running a company.
George Kurtz -: George Kurtz is the CEO of CrowdStrike. He is the person who leads the company.
IT Outages -: IT Outages mean that computers and networks stop working properly, causing problems for people who need to use them.
Software Update -: A software update is when new changes are made to a computer program to make it better or fix problems.
Windows blue screen of death -: The ‘Windows blue screen of death’ is a scary-looking error screen that shows up when a Windows computer has a big problem and needs to restart.
Cyberattack -: A cyberattack is when bad people try to break into computers or networks to steal information or cause damage.
Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) -: CERT-In is a group in India that helps protect the country’s computers and networks from problems and attacks.
Mitigate -: Mitigate means to make a problem less bad or easier to handle.
Sectors -: Sectors are different parts of the economy, like airlines, banks, or schools, that do different kinds of work.
Disruptions -: Disruptions are problems that stop things from working normally, causing delays and confusion.
