The impact of CrowdStrike’s faulty update was massive. According to Business Insider, major airlines like American, United, and Delta had to ground flights, leaving thousands of passengers stranded and causing travel chaos. European airlines, like Ryanair, also faced big delays and told passengers to arrive early to deal with the mess.
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) reported issues with appointment and patient record systems, even cancelling medical procedures and appointments. In Germany, hospitals were forced to also cancel elective operations, adding to the strain on health care providers already dealing with other pressures.
Retail operations were not spared either. Some Speedway gas stations in the U.S. had to close because digital gas pumps failed, and others could not accept payments.
Why Did This Happen?
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We…— George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 19, 2024
The root cause of the disaster was a defect in a single update for Windows provided by CrowdStrike that led to widespread system failures. The issue was not the result of a cyberattack but rather a critical flaw in the update’s coding. When released, it triggered a series of malfunctions in less than 1% of Windows machines.
Despite the relatively small percentage, the number of systems affected was enough to create global chaos. In response to Kurtz’s tweet, one Twitter user pointed out how little it takes to “bring down half the computers around the world.”
CrowdStrike’s immediate response included identifying the issue, isolating it, and deploying a fix. However, Microsoft stated that some users fixed their problems by rebooting the system 15 times.
CrowdStrike’s admission that such a huge error was not caught during testing has raised serious questions about its internal processes and safeguards.
History Repeating Itself
This incident has brought George Kurtz’s past into sharp focus. In 2010, as McAfee’s CTO, Kurtz was at the helm during another significant tech failure. The problem was eerily similar, and the fallout was substantial, with McAfee facing severe criticism and a loss of customer trust.
Since Thursday, the day before the outage, CrowdStrike stock has lost around 21% of its value, and Kurtz’s net worth plummeted from .2 billion to .6 billion on Wednesday, the 24th, according to Forbes.
Given this history, many are now wondering how Kurtz, with all his experience, let something like this happen again at CrowdStrike. The company has promised to investigate thoroughly to determine how the mistake happened and to implement measures to prevent it. However, fixing the damage to its reputation might take a while.
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Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga?This article CrowdStrike CEO Was Working For McAfee In 2010 When There Was A Global Tech Outage Too originally appeared on Benzinga.com© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
