On Friday, a major outage from Microsoft caused widespread disruption around the world. Computer glitches led to grounded flights, halted operations at banks and stock exchanges, and disrupted payment systems and emergency services. Downdetector, a service that tracks online disruptions, reported over 900 issues.
The majority (74 percent) of the reports were related to OneDrive, Microsoft's cloud storage. Additionally, 16 percent of the issues were due to server connection problems, while 10 percent of the reports were about email access issues through Outlook.
A recurring error message caused computers to restart, trapping users in a frustrating loop. The outage sparked a storm on social media, with users sharing their experiences and expressing a desire for a quick resolution.
Now, CrowdStrike, a company that is responsible for Microsoft’s cybersecurity and real-time cyber attack monitoring for all its apps and services across various sectors has explained what went wrong.
What caused Microsoft outage as per CrowdStrike
On July 19 at 9:30 a.m. (India time), cyber-security platform CrowdStrike released a sensor configuration update to Windows systems. Unfortunately, this update caused a logic error, resulting in a system crash and blue screen on impacted systems. The company clarified that this issue was not caused by a cyberattack.
The problematic sensor configuration update was remediated at around 10:57 a.m. It impacted millions of customers running Falcon sensor for Windows version 7.11 and above that were online and had downloaded the update during the specified timeframe.
The update was meant to target newly observed malicious named pipes used by common C2 frameworks in cyberattacks. CrowdStrike has corrected the logic error and is evaluating and protecting against the abuse of named pipes.
The company noted that systems not currently impacted will continue to operate as expected, provide protection, and not be at risk of experiencing this event in the future. CrowdStrike is conducting a thorough root cause analysis to determine how the logic flaw occurred.
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Inputs from IANS
