The time is 7PM GMT and the day is 19-July-2024.
#Breaking News: Windows Systems across the world face an error
Microsoft OS embedded systems across the world simultaneously started facing an error resulting in a blue screen, halting business operations in various sectors.
Airports, Banks, hospitals, Shopping Complexes and literally everywhere around the world, where Microsoft embedded PCs are used; operations had to be halted. This error was, infamously termed as the “Blue Screen of Death”.
It had a huge impact worldwide where airports couldn’t schedule flights, ticket bookings were paused in theatres and even shopping centres had to be closed.
How did it happen? And who was responsible?
Well it’s “Crowdstrike” a cyber security firm, which makes antivirus softwares and investigates cyber attacks. Crowdstrike works with multiple companies and “Microsoft” is one among their many clients, to who they offer security services. While they were trying to install a security update at 7 PM, the Microsoft system crashed, leading to the “Blue Screen of Death”.
What does the CEO of “Crowdstrike” has to say?
Here’s what the CEO message on X read.
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.
Insights:
The global outage that occured yesterday, was completely an intentional error, which had occurred. The cyber outage points out to the situation where the entire world is dependent on “Microsoft” for its OS systems. If Microsoft crashes, the OS world crashes, which sends the signal that we have to focus on having a diverse pool of OS providers, so that a crash in any one of the providers don’t lead to global cyber outage. The outage also points out to the case where hackers could take over the world by just crashing into one company.