CrowdStrike confirms 'defect' in Microsoft update behind outages
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More news: Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike says widespread tech outages that have affected banks, airlines, broadcaster and other business around the world were caused by a "defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts".
In a statement posted on X, the company's president and CEO George Kurtz confirmed that the outages weren't related to a security incident or cyberattack and said a fix had been deployed.
Meanwhile, Australia's Home Affairs Minister Claire O'Neil said CrowdStrike had attended the National Coordination Mechanism meeting convened in response to the outages, informing the group that "most issues should be resolved through the fix they have provided, but given the size and nature of this incident it may take some time to resolve".
No impact on critical infrastructure, Triple-0 from outage: Albanese
More news: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement that the outage linked to CrowdStrike has had no impact on "critical infrastructure, government services or Triple-0 services at this stage".
He added that the government is working closely with the National Cyber Security Coordinator and the National Coordination Mechanism has been activated and is meeting currently.
CrowdStrike shares plunge on outage
More news: CrowdStrike shares were down 14% in pre-market trading on the Nasdaq following the global outage caused by a glitch from the company's cybersecurity software. The company's market value at Thursday's close was US$83 billion ($124 million).
Though the company has reportedly deployed a fix, it may take hours for individual businesses, including banks and airports, to restore their systems.
Banks in South Africa and Israel have reported disruptions, as well as airports in Singapore, Germany, Spain and India.
CrowdStrike to push out update to fix crisis, Tesserent says
More news: CrowdStrike is in the process of sending out an update to fix the outages caused by its Falcon threat-detection software, according to Australian cybersecurity firm Tesserent.
CrowdStrike have also published a manual way to reboot PCs that are stuck on the "blue screen of death".
What they said: "CrowdStrike have deployed a new content update which resolves the previously erroneous update and subsequent host issues," said Tesserent senior partner Mark Jones.
"As your devices receive this update you may need to reboot for the changes to take effect and for the blue screen (BSOD) issues to be resolved."
Both a moderator on CrowdStrike's Reddit and Tesserent posted a manual workaround to fix the issue. The steps are as follows:
- Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment
- Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory
- Locate the file matching “C-00000291*.sys”, and delete it.
- Boot the host normally.
National Emergency Mechanism Agency to meet over outage
More news: A federal government spokesperson said the National Emergency Mechanism Agency — Australia's federal, state and territorial governments, as well as representatives from industry — will soon have a meeting over the outage.
They noted that Australia's 000 services had not been impacted by the outage. However, 911 emergency lines in several US states are reportedly unresponsive including in Arkansas and Mississippi.
Meanwhile, American Airlines, Delta and United Airlines have grounded flights, the companies said Friday morning (US time), due to communication issues. It is not known if the issues are related to the CrowdStrike outages.
Global website outage caused by CrowdStrike cybersecurity glitch
The news: Banks, airlines, media, supermarkets and tech platforms in Australia and across the world have been hit with a simultaneous outage caused by a cybersecurity glitch related to CrowdStrike software.
The context: Commonwealth Bank, NAB, Suncorp, Microsoft 365, Foxtel and the ABC are all among those impacted, according to Down Detector, a service that records reports of website outages.
The outages, which have also occurred in the US and Europe, are caused by a glitch in cybersecurity company Crowdstrike's Falcon threat-detection software.
Users of Windows PCs reported their machines involuntarily shut down on Friday afternoon, with attempts to restart them being met with a "blue screen of death" telling them that Windows could not load.
Enterprise infrastructure running the cybersecurity software was also taken down, leading to service disruptions across the globe.
CrowdStrike pushed out an update to its Falcon software on Friday, which is believed to have caused the issue.
What they said: "CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor," the company wrote in an alert.
"Our Engineering teams are actively working to resolve this issue and there is no need to open a support ticket."
Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator, Michelle McGuinness, reinforced via an X post that the disruptions are not thought to be caused by a cyberattack.
"I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon," she wrote.
"There is no information to suggest it is a cyber security incident... Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies."
The sources: Crowdstrike, National Cyber Security Coordinator, Reuters, Reddit, Tesserent, Yahoo Finance
