Who are CrowdStrike? Tech firm behind virus update that sparked ‘doomsday’ Microsoft outage worldwide
THE IT outage creating chaos across the globe appears to stem from a dodgy update sent out by cyber-security company CrowdStrike.
TV channels, banks, hospitals, airports and emergency services have all taken a hit from the system crash.
Founder of cyber research company Imperum Senad Aruc described the incident as “CrowdStrike Doom’s Day”.
He wrote on X: “Looks like Crowdstrike Dooms Day it is real, many airline companies having issues with their systems. Schiphol airport is frozen.”
CrowdStrike is an IT security firm based in Austin, Texas that provides a platform to protect data and is reportedly used by Microsoft.
The company offers a platform dubbed “Falcon Sensor” designed to “blocks attacks on your systems while capturing and recording activity as it happens to detect threats fast”.
But the Falcon Sensor software appears to have caused the crash.
CrowdStrike ran a recorded phone message on Friday saying it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to its Falcon platform.
A prerecorded message said: “Thanks for contacting Crowdstrike support. Crowdstrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows… related to the Falcon sensor.”
An alert on the CrowdStrike support page said: “CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor.
“Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bugcheck\blue screen error related to the Falcon Sensor.
“Our Engineering teams are actively working to resolve this issue and there is no need to open a support ticket.”
The company regularly updates systems with new anti-virus software.
Cyber expert Troy Hunt told Australian TV network Seven: “It looks like they’ve pushed a bad update, which is presently nuking every machine that takes it.”
Other cyber experts said it illustrated the perils of an interconnected world so reliant on IT functioning properly.
CyberCX chief strategy officer Alastair MacGibbon told newspaper the Sydney Morning Herald: “It highlights the interconnected nature of software.
“It’s that classic situation – the more hyper-connected we are, the more one single issue that goes wrong can cause ripple effects around the world.”
Microsoft announced it was taking “mitigation actions” to rectify the issues.
They said via X: “Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions.”
Meanwhile, Brits were warned of travel chaos sparked by the outage/
Ryanair has told passengers to arrive three hours early, while Govia Thameslink Railway warned of disruption and amid “widespread IT issues”.
The Sun has approached CrowdStrike for comment.