Millions of users of Microsoft products found themselves without service Friday as a security update pushed out by Crowdstike went terribly wrong. Across the globe, the outage knocked out operations for banks, trains, airlines, and emergency services.
Windows computers and tablets crashed in countries from the U.S. to China and Australia, with reports of forced restarts of devices spreading across social media throughout the day.
The problem appeared to be caused by an update from CrowdStrike, Microsoft employees and outside technology professionals familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. Several cited an error message related to Crowdstrike on affected devices, and a subsequent workaround that was aimed at deleting a CrowdStrike file.
CrowdStrike shares were down nearly 14% in premarket trading. Microsoft was down 2.4%.
Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
CrowdStrike Chief Executive George Kurtz said in a post on X that the issue had been identified and a fix had been deployed, adding that “this is not a security incident or cyberattack.”
Don’t worry, though. The guy from IT with the neckbeard and the can of Red Bull will be on the case pretty soon.
