What happened when Microsoft Windows faced a global outage in 2024

Overview

It’s July 20th, 2024, Yesterday on 19th July, 2024 at 7pm, the world has seen an major Cyber disaster of the century. This is happens when suddenly people see the blue death of screen in window operating system. Window Operating system doesn’t respond world wide. People considered it as cyber attack.

Was it a cyber attack ? How did big tech giant like Microsoft makes such a big mistake? What are the impacts we have seen on this day?

Table of Content

• When did it happens?
• What really Happened to Microsoft's Windows?
• Who is responsible for this biggest IT outage?
• The global impacts of this outage in various sectors
• Why Crowd Strike Problem Isn’t A Simple Fix?
• Summary

When did it happens?

According to BBC live reporting, 22:00 19 July, 2024. Windows user faced a blue screen of death worldwide. Which cause windows to break fully and people can't perform any task in their computer. It was unclear, what caused this major outage to occur at global scale:

Major news channels keep updating everyone about the current outage. They're constantly sharing new information and keeping people informed.

At the same time, CrowdStrike and Microsoft are working hard to figure out what they should do next. Either they have to admit their fault or said it was a cyber attack. But both decisions were bitter pill for them because crowdstrike is basically a company which has cybersecurity responsibility.

There’s a lot of talk about whether this could be a cyber attack, but the companies have actually admitted that the real problem is a bad update to their code.

What really Happened to Microsoft's Windows?

Corporates around the world is freaking out right now because everyone's work computers are broken and can't be used. This major problem has hit a lot of Fortune 500 companies that rely on CrowdStrike for cybersecurity. CrowdStrike has over 500 clients on the Fortune 1000 list, and its main product is called Falcon. Falcon is a powerful software tool that helps organizations safeguard their computers against cyber threats and malware infections.

CrowdStrike is a publicly traded company, and its stock is currently down because everyone is blaming them for causing Windows computers to show the blue screen of death (BSOD).

Fortunately, Mac OS and Linux users are not affected by this issue, so their systems continue to run smoothly and remain operational without experiencing any of the problems that have disrupted Windows computers.

To understand what went wrong, we need to know how CrowdStrike's Falcon sensor works. Falcon is installed like regular software but connects deeply with the operating system, often using special drivers. It runs quietly in the background, looking for problems, collecting data, and creating reports. But because it’s critical software, if it fails, the whole computer can fail.

And that's exactly what happened. Last night, an automated update had some bad code. Every computer that got this update is now broken and can't be used.

Who is responsible for this biggest IT outage?

As the global chaos starts to ease and systems gradually come back online, the massive IT outage from Friday, which caused widespread disruption, reveals some uncomfortable truths about our digital lives and how delicate they can be.

This outage has shown that even a major company like Microsoft, which invests heavily in robust security measures, can be significantly impacted by a simple mistake in a software update from an independent cybersecurity firm. Given that Microsoft-powered computers are central to much of our tech infrastructure, the effects were particularly severe.

Obviously, people are blaming Microsoft and CrowdStrike for this outage. Cyber-security firm CrowdStrike has admitted that the problem was caused by an update to its antivirus software, which is designed to protect Microsoft Windows devices from malicious attacks. If it was a cyberattack, it will be more huge humiliation for Microsoft.

Blue Screen of Death reported worldwide. You likely already know what that means. Microsoft quickly stated that it was a "third-party issue"—in other words, they were implying it wasn't their fault.

Although, Microsoft claims outage was not caused by cyber-attack. If that is true then there is a problem on the development of the update. According to IT experts, A simple C++ code bug cause this outage. That’s why it is now important for developers to have proper testing before deploying application to the production.

Developers needs to be careful if they are deploying application to the production. Especially startups, which needs to be careful about user experience (UX) to get a place in the market.

Unlike Microsoft, which is monopoly of modern day operating system. It became the necessity of modern IT infrastructure. So, for startups we have an development team which can help you to develop web apps for your business without need you to take headaches of hiring and managing your own team. See our plans here.

Official response from Microsoft and Crowdstrike

Let’s see the response from the officials of CrowdStrike and Microsoft about this outage. First we see the responce from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadela:

Microsoft official Satya Nadella simply apply all the burdens on Crowdstrike without taking the Microsoft responsibility regarding it’s third party choices.

This gave a seizure to automotive supply chain ~ Elon musk added

Similarly, we got the response from CEO of Crowdstrike:

The problem with this statement people are criticizing about that they haven’t admitted that they messed up. But a part of that, the problem is too much bigger than we think that we will discuss in next section. But let’s see how they will fix this update.

The global impacts of this outage in various sectors

The outage was catastrophic for all over the globe. Many big sectors like IT, Health care center, Airports, Banks and Businesses.

Here are some real time incident we have observed in that day:

Mass General Brigham cancels non-urgent surgeries, hospital visits

Mass General Brigham operates U.S.’s top-ranked hospitals. They cancel all non-urgent surgeries, treatment and medical visits due to the “severity of global outrage”

They post it in X and they also add this in their tweet: “Mass General Brigham remains open to provide care to patients with urgent health concerns in our clinics and emergency departments, and we continue to care for all patients currently receiving care in our hospitals.”

12-hour time-lapse of US airlines conditions after outage

As you can see what happens to airport traffic. Many people flights has been cancelled and many suffer from lack of support. The conditions of airports were catastrophic. Just like in India, people are getting hand written airline tickets.

Some people gets the feeling of the stone age. This is because now a day, we are so reliable on technology that it now becomes the necessity of life. All aspects of life are now handling with modern technology.

That’s why Microsoft windows becomes the oxygen for the modern technology and computer systems. Microsoft windows are the leading operating system for day to day task. Unlike Mac and Linux, it becomes the necessity.

But Microsoft poor policy may divert people interests from Windows. The reason becomes people also feels the same outage months ago. When Microsoft launches window 11 which only supports processors that is advanced than core i8.

I know there are ways to use it even if the minimum requirement doesn’t meet. But the problems remained the same. Because with the time Microsoft will stop window 10 updates which will be headache for user which has core i7 or less powerful operating system.

Who is responsible for this biggest IT outage?

A global IT outage, triggered by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, caused widespread disruptions to computer systems on Thursday and Friday.

The outage had a significant impact on various industries, including businesses, banking, healthcare, and aviation.

CrowdStrike's CEO has since apologized for the incident and confirmed that a fix has been released. However, full recovery is expected to take some time, as organizations work to restore their systems. The BBC says

If you are here with this issue. Currently this video might help you to solve issues in your PC:

Why Crowd Strike Problem Isn’t A Simple Fix?

The reason why my IT experts have concern is because severity of problem. There was a problem with a file of the operating system

So, the problem we get from -00000291*.sys file. This file corrupted and cause the operating system to crash. Crowd Strike might fix this problem but the problem is that they can’t update the pc directly when PC is not turned on for update. This is the huge problem it means computer and servers need to fix this problem manually. Unless, Crowd Strike team might find a solution about this problem.

Hope they find out the solution otherwise people need to manually solve this problem with tech professional. If you get this problem and you are not a tech professional to solve this problem manually then contact our developers by contacting us. We will fix that problem for you.

Summary

This incident gives us the lession to not trust 3rd party vendors but also at the sametime teach us the importance of cybersecurity. This is absolutely important because if a small bug from 3rd party vendor causes million of computers to break.

How devastating if this was actually a cyberattack. But actually companies can get cyberattacks. It would be a good idea to make a good frontline of cybersecurity experts to ensure security of your product from invasion of cyberattack.

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