Faulty CrowdStrike update affected 8.5M Windows devices: Microsoft

Software update by CrowdStrike triggered issues that grounded flights, forced broadcasters off air and left customers without access to healthcare or banking services.

CrowdStrike helped develop a solution that will help Microsoft's Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix. / Photo: AP
AP

CrowdStrike helped develop a solution that will help Microsoft's Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix. / Photo: AP

A global tech outage that was related to a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike had affected nearly 8.5 million Microsoft devices, Microsoft said in a blog post.

"We currently estimate that CrowdStrike's update affected 8.5 million Windows devices or less than one percent of all Windows machines," it said in the blog on Saturday.

A software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, one of the largest operators in the industry, triggered systems problems that grounded flights, forced broadcasters off the air and left customers without access to services such as healthcare or banking.

"While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services," Microsoft said in its blog post.

Read More
Read More

Worldwide IT outages affect banks, airlines, broadcasters and companies

Global outage

CrowdStrike has helped develop a solution that will help Microsoft's Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix, Microsoft said, adding that it was working with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, sharing information about the effects Microsoft was seeing across the industry.

The air travel industry was recovering on Saturday from the outage that caused thousands of flights to be cancelled, leaving passengers stranded or grappling with hours of delays as airports and airlines were caught up in the IT outage.

Delta Air Lines, one of the hardest-hit airlines, said that as of 1400 GMT on Saturday, more than 600 flights had been cancelled, adding that additional cancellations were expected.

Read More
Read More

Microsoft alert: What is CrowdStrike Falcon and what happens if it fails

Route 6