CrowdStrike Windows outage

On July 19, 2024, a global outage impacting approximately 8.5 million Windows devices was caused by a faulty update from CrowdStrike, which led to widespread 'Blue Screen of Death' errors. The update, intended to enhance threat monitoring, contained problematic content that resulted from a bug in CrowdStrike's testing software, which failed to properly validate the update before release. This oversight caused the Windows operating system to crash as it attempted to process invalid memory addresses. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz acknowledged the issue and noted that over 97% of affected systems have been restored. In response, the company has committed to enhancing its testing processes to prevent similar incidents in the future. The outage has raised concerns over cybersecurity vulnerabilities, with significant financial implications estimated at $5.4 billion for Fortune 500 companies affected.