New York – A blue screen and a sad face were the images that billions of Microsoft users around the world encountered as a warning of a global system failure caused by an update to an antivirus program in the cloud by the company CrowdStrike.
The “Blue Screen of Death” (BSoD) warned billions of users around the world that something was wrong.
“Your computer is experiencing problems and needs to be restarted,” read a message accompanying the troubleshooting notice.
The blue screen and sad face were displayed on computers running Microsoft in millions of locations, including businesses and airports.
The alert was an indication of a Microsoft Windows error or system crash.
The “BSoD” warning can affect anyone, anywhere.
“The BSOD is generated by the operating system when it has suddenly crashed. The system crashes and must be rebooted. The blue screen may include some hexadecimal values from a memory dump that can potentially be used to determine the cause of the crash,” explains a post on TechTarget.
Retired Microsoft engineer David Plummer told NBC that while BSoD has always been synonymous with technological problems on individual computers, everyone getting the blue screen at the same time is rare. The software expert added that it’s not always a complex issue that causes the warning to appear, but that it has to be a glitch somewhere in the system where there’s no other alternative.
The causes of Microsoft’s computer failure
The blackout that began early yesterday morning was caused by an error in a software update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Texas, for the Windows 10 operating system.
“We are aware of an issue in the cloud with Windows 365 computers caused by a recent update to the CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor software,” Microsoft said in a message on its 365 Status account on social network X.
In another message at around 10:43 am yesterday, the administrators indicated that the problem had been resolved.
“We have completed mitigation actions and our telemetry indicates that all previously affected Microsoft 365 applications and services have been recovered. We are entering a monitoring period to ensure that the impact is fully resolved…” the social network explained.
The global blackout affected services at hospitals, banks, airports and other venues.
In terms of air traffic, major airlines such as American Airlines, Delta and United had to cancel or delay flights around the world due to the power outage, and images of long lines at airports were repeated.
Ports in cities including New York, Los Angeles, California, and Houston, Texas, also reported delays in their operations.
Cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt, who runs HaveIBeenPwned, a website specialising in the state of online networks, told Efe that the global scale of the Windows 10 system crash represents the largest computer outage in history.
“This is basically what we were worried about with the Y2K bug, except this time it actually happened,” the expert explained.
Hunt says the situation is only comparable to what was anticipated for 2000 when the threat of a general paralysis of systems as a result of a computer failure was part of the discussion. The doubt came from the fear that older technological systems would not recognise the changes of the new millennium.
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