Chaos worldwide at airports, hospitals and banks due to a computer failure that affected Microsoft

A recent security update by Crowdstrike has triggered a series of technical problems worldwide, affecting Microsoft systems.

These failures have impacted various sectors such as airlines, airports, payment systems, healthcare and media.

CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that provides advanced protection against digital threats.

What happened to Microsoft?

1. Problematic update: An update to a Crowdstrike cybersecurity component caused numerous failures on Microsoft systems.
2. Blue Screens: Microsoft customers experienced the dreaded “blue screen of death,” preventing their systems from functioning properly.
3. Crowdstrike Actions: Crowdstrike has implemented mitigation and recovery measures. Its CEO said at 9:05 EST that the bug has been fixed.
4. Impact on Azure: Errors in the update crashed Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, affecting data storage and processing.
5. Service Recovery: Microsoft is restoring functionality to its applications and services and redirecting affected traffic to alternate systems.

George Kurtz, CEO of Crowdstrike, clarified that this incident is not a cyberattack or a security issue, but rather an isolated failure. The company has already implemented a solution and is providing support to customers to update their systems.

Computer experts say the Falcon driver update contained bugs that crashed Azure. This triggered “blue screens” around the world, forcing servers to be rebooted.

Microsoft reported that the configuration of a portion of the Azure server workload caused an interruption in storage and processing, affecting 365 services.

The company has now fixed the underlying cause and restored functionality to several apps and services.

The Microsoft 365 engineering team is taking additional actions to mitigate the issue, seeing an increase in functionality and availability as they continue to move toward a full recovery.

This disruption has created problems in multiple sectors worldwide, with the airline sector being one of the most affected.

The problems have spread globally, affecting major U.S. airlines, airports and carriers in Europe and Asia.

In addition, major international media outlets, the Paris 2024 IT system, the London Stock Exchange and several railway companies have also been affected.

What is CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that provides advanced protection against digital threats.

Founded in 2011 by George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch and Gregg Marston, the company specializes in threat detection and prevention, as well as response to computer security incidents.