A software update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike has knocked millions of computers using the Microsoft Windows operating system offline Friday morning, with airlines, media outlets, banks, and hotels all noting disruptions.
TV news outlets in both the United States and the UK have admitted to difficulties due to the outages. Sky News in the United Kingdom was affected, while ESPN’s morning show Get Up joked about the issues, noting the program could not utilize its usual graphics package and no video playback was available at the conclusion of the morning show.
“It reminds us about our dependence on IT and software,” cybersecurity expert Olejnik told Wired.com. “When a system has several software systems maintained by various vendors, this is equivalent to placing trust on them. They may be a single point of failure—like here, when various firms feel the impact.”
George Kurtz, CrowdStrike President and CEO, took to social media to assure users the company is working on fixing issues that appear to be Microsoft specific.
“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,” Kurtz wrote.
“We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”
