Millions are still reeling from the aftereffects of the historical Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage last week.
Across the globe millions are still recovering from one the biggest cyber events in history that occurred last Friday. An estimated 8.5 million Windows devices were impacted by shutdowns in travel, medical care, banking, retailer, fast-food, delivery services, critical infrastructure, and media outlets. This outage was caused by a bug in CrowdStrike's "Falcon Sensor" software, antivirus software designed to protect Microsoft Windows devices from malicious attacks which caused Windows systems to crash and display the blue screen of death (BSOD) or boot loop. CrowdStrike quickly released a manual workaround, and they continue to work with clients to resolve the problem.
Shawn Henry, Chief Security Officer at CrowdStrike has since taken ownership of this mishap and issued an apology on LinkedIn: Post | Feed | LinkedIn
“On Friday we failed you, and for that I'm deeply sorry. I’ve been in my professional life for almost 40 years, and my North Star has always been to “protect good people from bad things…”
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz warns users to be aware of bad actors that will take advantage of this outage by offering software that is really malware disguised a fix:
"We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this. I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives. Our blog and technical support will continue to be the official channels for the latest updates.
Nothing is more important to me than the trust and confidence that our customers and partners have put into CrowdStrike. As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again."
"We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this. I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives. Our blog and technical support will continue to be the official channels for the latest updates."
In other new developments:
CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor also linked to Linux kernel panics and crashes (msn.com)
CrowdStrike’s now-infamous Falcon Sensor software, which last week led to widespread outages of Windows-powered computers, has also caused crashes of Linux machines.…
Red Hat in June warned its customers of a problem it described as “Kernel panic observed after booting 5.14.0-427.13.1.el9_4.x86_64 by falcon-sensor process” that impacted some users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 after (as the warning suggests) booting on kernel version 5.14.0-427.13.1.el9_4.x86_64.
Microsoft pins Windows outage on EU-enforced ‘interoperability’ deal – Computerworld
An interoperability deal Microsoft enforced by the European Commission in 2009 may have led the Windows-maker to open itself to the recent CrowdStrike-led outage, according to Microsoft.
