Revealed, Cause of CrowdStrike Software Update Failure Causes 8.5 Million Windows to Down

Liputan6.com, Jakarta – Cybersecurity software company CrowdStrike published a post-mortem review of a failed software update that crippled at least 8.5 million Windows-based computers last week.

Worse still, because of this problem, the operations of airlines, airports, banks, retail centers, and even hospitals have been disrupted.

In a detailed post, CrowdStrike blamed the software update failure on a bug in the beta version of the software that failed to validate a content update that was pushed to millions of computers last Friday.

Quoting The VergeThursday (4/25/2024), CrowdStrike promised to test its content updates more thoroughly, improve error handling, and implement a gradual rollout to avoid a recurrence of the same problem.

FYI, the CrowdStrike software that contained the bug is Falcon. This software is used by many businesses around the world to help manage malware and security breaches on millions of Windows computers.

Last Friday, CrowdStrike issued a content configuration update for its software that was supposed to “collect telemetry on potential new threat techniques.” The updates are regularly sent out, but this particular configuration update caused Windows to go down.

CrowdStrike itself usually issues configuration updates in two different ways. The first is called Sensor Content which directly updates CrowdStrike’s own Falcon sensor that runs at the kernel level in Windows.

A global disruption to Microsoft Windows operating systems has affected the passenger check-in counter service system at Terminal 3 of Soekarno Hatta Airport. As a result, long queues of passengers have occurred at several airline counters.