Microsoft outage: What is CrowdStrike, the service causing ‘Blue Screen of Death’ worldwide
Microsoft Windows users around the world, including in India, Australia, Germany, the United States, the UK, and more, are experiencing a blue screen issue on their laptops, causing their systems to restart or shut down automatically. Companies such as Dell Technologies have attributed the crash to a recent CrowdStrike update.
The outage, which started Thursday evening in Microsoft’s Central US region, disrupted essential systems for many airlines, including American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Allegiant, and Sun Country in the US, as well as IndiGo and other airlines in India.
It was not immediately clear if all reported outages were related to CrowdStrike problems or if other issues were involved.
What is CrowdStrike?
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity platform offering security solutions to users and businesses. It utilizes a single sensor and a unified threat interface that correlates attacks across endpoints, workloads, and identities. Falcon Identity Threat Protection prevents identity-driven breaches in real time.
Reports indicate that the problematic update is causing CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor to malfunction and conflict with the Windows system. CrowdStrike has acknowledged the issue, stating, “Our engineers are actively working to resolve this issue, and there is no need to open a support ticket.” The company will inform users once the issue is resolved.
Microsoft confirmed that the Azure outage was resolved early Friday, but the disruption highlighted the potential risks of heavy reliance on cloud services for critical infrastructure. This outage impacted airlines, banks, supermarkets, media outlets, and other businesses.
What is Blue Screen of Death?
The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is a critical error screen that appears on Windows operating systems when the system crashes due to a severe issue that makes it unsafe to operate. When this error occurs, the computer unexpectedly restarts, often resulting in the loss of unsaved data.
In this instance, the Blue Screen of Death error message reads, “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We are collecting some error information and will restart for you.” This issue is observed on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.
