ET Explains: How a faulty Microsoft Windows update by CrowdStrike led to havoc
Microsoft's Windows devices. Users across the world and in India complained about a blue screen of death error when they booted their devices.
The outage was caused due to a faulty update caused by CrowdStrike, which manages end-point security for several firms across the globe, including Microsoft. Overall, Microsoft's suite of services such as Azure, Outlook, and Teams were impacted throughout the day.
What caused the outage?
CrowdStrike, a Texas-headquartered cybersecurity company provides real-time threat management and detection to other companies. On Friday, the company pushed an update to its security management systems which was intended to increase the protection features. The update, however, ran into a conflict with Microsoft's cloud service infrastructure, causing several devices to show the blue screen of death message.
In Windows, the blue screen of death message is shown when a critical issue forces the system to shut down or restart to prevent further damage.
Experts said that the update pushed by CrowdStrike triggered a bug in Microsoft's servers, which in turn led to an unprecedented surge in traffic causing all systems to stop responding to user requests.
Which industries were impacted by the outage?
All industries which use the CrowdStrike service for securing the devices faced this outage. Of this, the highest impact was on banks and airlines. Several airlines across the world were forced to ground the aircraft and ask passengers to reschedule their travel plans.
In India, for example,
