Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) of Windows

The Fall of Windows: A Global Problem

Several weeks ago, on July 19th, airports, banks, and various companies around the globe faced the dreaded blue screens of death, signaling a Windows crash that paralyzed their operations. The culprit? A failure in an update from the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.

What Caused the Crash?

According to a statement issued by CrowdStrike, the Windows crash was due to a failure in the deployment of an update. This caused Windows devices to experience bugs or BSOD (blue screen of death) errors, related to the Falcon sensor. CrowdStrike has denied that this was caused by a cyberattack or security incident.

CrowdStrike's Response

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz informed on social media platform X that the issue was "identified and isolated" and that they are "implementing a solution". Microsoft also released a recovery tool designed to help IT teams quickly restore Windows devices affected by the faulty update.

Global Impact

CrowdStrike's software solutions are used by companies across multiple sectors, including banking, healthcare, aerospace, and energy. Countries that reported issues include Australia, the United Kingdom, India, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States.

In the United States, several states reported outages in 911 lines, and airlines such as Delta, American, and United suspended operations. Additional disruptions affected Air India, KLM, and airports like Hong Kong, Berlin Brandenburg, and London Stansted.

In the financial industry, the London Stock Exchange, as well as banks and payment terminals in Australia, were also impacted.

Financial Consequences

All these inconveniences caused CrowdStrike's shares to fall by almost 16.8% and Microsoft's by 2.3%.

Financial Consequences

CrowdStrike is a leading cybersecurity firm specializing in endpoint protection. Founded in 2011, it stands out for its cloud-based platform, Falcon, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect, prevent, and respond to sophisticated attacks in real-time. Besides its Falcon platform, CrowdStrike offers managed detection and response (MDR) services, threat intelligence, and penetration testing.

Solution

On July 22nd, Windows released a recovery tool from CrowdStrike to address the problem.