Crowdstrike issues major update as global IT outage causes chaos

The incident has been described by experts as the biggest IT problem since 2017.

By Hannah Kane, Deputy News Editor, Rosie Jempson, US News Reporter

10:57, Fri, Jul 19, 2024 | UPDATED: 14:13, Fri, Jul 19, 2024

Queues at Gatwick airport after global technology outage

Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike has revealed that the global IT outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

A spokesperson added: "The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

It comes as the outage has brought airports, train stations and GP surgeries to a standstill.

In a statement, George Kurtz, the CEO of Crowdstrike said: "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.

Global IT Outage Affects Airlines, Banks And Retailers

The global IT outage has affected airlines, banks and retailers (Image: Getty)

IT Outage Affects Businesses and Users Across The Globe

Crowdstrike has revealed that the global IT outage was not a security incident or cyberattack (Image: Getty)

"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 organisations ensure they’re communicating with Crowdstrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of Crowdstrike customers."

A broken update on Crowdstrike's system is believed to have be behind the outage and caused chaos worldwide.

The software update is believed to have been sent out to subscriber computers on Friday afternoon and instantly sent servers into a death spiral of reboots and the so-called 'blue screen of death', with the error message: 'DRIVER_OVERRAN_STACK_BUFFER'

Global IT Outage Affects Airlines, Banks And Retailers

Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity firm designed to stop IT breaches for the world's biggest companies (Image: Getty)

The outage has caused chaos worldwide, with flights grounded, supermarkets closing their doors, banks pushed offline and TV stations off air.

Amiram Shachar, founder of rival security firm, Upwind, said: "The computing crisis we're currently witnessing, due to a technical issue in Crowdstrike's agent, is unprecedented in a scale we haven't seen in years."

They added: "As the agent causes organisations' Windows systems to shut down, millions of companies are affected, since most organisations deploy updates automatically.

"Given that the Crowdstrike agent is installed on millions of devices, ranging from servers to PCs and IoT devices, the damage is unprecedented."