Heaptalk, Jakarta — Microsoft cloud service reportedly was down on Friday (07/19). Several businesses, such as banks, airlines, railways, telecommunications companies, TV and radio broadcasters, and supermarkets, have been taken offline after a blue screen of death error screen on Windows.
In response to the trouble, Microsoft claimed that this global technology outage, related to software by security firm CrowdStrike, had affected nearly 8.5 million Microsoft devices.
“We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices or less than 1% of all Windows machines. While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of this cybersecurity by enterprises that many critical services,” Vice President, Enterprise and OS Security of Microsoft, David Wetson, responded to this issue on the official website.
Separately, CrowdStrike explained the configuration file is at the heart of the problem. Configuration files are called “Channel Files” and are part of the protection mechanisms used by Falcon sensors. The cybersecurity company claims that Updates are a normal part of sensor operations and occur several times daily in response to new tactics, techniques, and procedures discovered. CrowdStrike revealed that this file evaluated Falcon’s executable pipe1 instead of a kernel driver on Windows systems.
“All of CrowdStrike understands the gravity and impacts of the situation. We quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, allowing us to focus diligently on restoring customer systems as our highest priority. A defect in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts caused the outage. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” CrowdStrike’s Founder and CEO, George Kurtz,
Since the incident began, Microsoft has maintained ongoing communication with the customers, CrowdStrike, and external developers to collect information and expedite solutions. This technology behemoth recognizes the disruption it has caused businesses and individuals’ daily routines. Steps taken have included:
- Engaging with CrowdStrike to automate their work on developing a solution. This cybersecurity platform has recommended a workaround to address this issue. It has also issued a public statement with instructions on how to remedy the situation on Windows endpoints that were posted on the Windows Message Center.
- Deploying hundreds of Microsoft engineers and experts to work directly with customers to restore services.
- Collaborating with other cloud providers and stakeholders, including Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS), to share awareness on the state of impact we are each seeing across the industry and inform ongoing conversations with CrowdStrike and customers.
- Quickly posting remediation documentation and scripts found.
- Keeping customers informed of the latest status on the incident through the Azure Status Dashboard.
