Microsoft Outage

A massive  tech-failure has caused a chaos in the world with every services and departments being hit.Businesses globally faced a significant IT outage throughout  impacting financial services, healthcare facilities, and causing some TV broadcasters to go offline. Air travel has been severely affected, leading to grounded planes, delayed services, and airports providing guidance to passengers.

The above pic you are seeing is exactly what users are facing. Microsoft Office users are encountering the “blue screen of death” issue, displaying a message that indicates the PC encountered a severe problem and needs to restart. This issue typically occurs when the system crashes due to a critical problem that compromises its safe operation. As a result, systems automatically restart, potentially leading to data loss for unsaved work.

Services Affected by CrowdStrike

1. Global Airlines: Airlines worldwide experienced significant disruptions, resulting in flight delays and cancellations. Indian carriers such as Air India, IndiGo, SpiceJet, and Akasa reported disruptions. The Indian Aviation Ministry instructed airlines to notify passengers about delays and cancellations via text messages. Several US airlines also faced service disruptions, with some temporarily grounding flights due to communication issues.
2. Cloud Services: Cloud services, notably Azure and Amazon Web Services, were affected by the outage.
3. Banking and Retail Services: Banking services encountered payment system failures, leading to long queues at retail outlets. ATMs were also affected, impacting banking operations.
4. Stock Exchanges: Stock exchanges, including the London Stock Exchange, experienced service disruptions. Brokerage firms such as Nomura, Edelweiss, and Motilal Oswal reported issues.
5. News Services: The outage affected news services globally, with major television channels unable to broadcast. Australia and the US, including emergency services like 911, reported disruptions.
6. Healthcare Services: Healthcare services were significantly impacted by the outage.

What exactly the issue is?

According to reports, the crash has been attributed to a recent update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity platform that provides security solutions to businesses and individuals. Microsoft stated that the outage resulted from a configuration update within a segment of its backend workload. Subsequently, it was revealed that a problematic update was caused by a malfunction in CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor, which conflicted with Windows systems. CrowdStrike has acknowledged the issue and is currently in the process of globally rolling back the update.

Computers equipped with CrowdStrike cybersecurity applications are encountering the “blue screen of death” issue as a result. The company has provided a workaround to address PCs affected by the faulty update.

WorkAround to Fix Issue

• “Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment
• “Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory
• “Locate the file matching ‘C-0000029*.sys’, and delete it.
• “Boot the host normally.”

Crowdstrike Stock

The worldwide disruption significantly impacted CrowdStrike’s stock price, causing it to drop by $42.22, a decline of over 12%, to slightly above $300 during afternoon trading.

However, the impact is expected to affect CrowdStrike’s reputation more than its financial standing. Despite the setback, CrowdStrike remains a robust entity valued at over $73 billion.

According to equity analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush, “CrowdStrike possesses a strong brand and global marketing presence, which will need to intensify in the coming weeks and months to mitigate some of the fallout from this incident.”