What caused the global cyber outage?
Adds Microsoft and CrowdStrike RICs
By Martin Coulter and James Pearson
LONDON, July 19 (Reuters) -A global tech failure disrupted operations across multiple industries on Friday, halting flights and forcing a number of broadcasters off air, as the outage upended everything from banking to healthcare systems.
WHAT HAPPENED?
CrowdStrike, a U.S. cybersecurity company, is among the most popular in the world, counting more than 20,000 subscription customers around the world.
According to an alert sent by CrowdStrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, its widely used "Falcon Sensor" software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the “Blue Screen of Death”.
The alert, which was sent at 0530 GMT on Friday, also shared a manual workaround to resolve the issue.
WHY DID IT HAPPEN?
"The damage to business processes at the global level is dramatic. The glitch is due to a software update of CrowdStrike's EDR product," said Omer Grossman, Chief Information Officer at identity security firm CyberArk.
EDR, or Endpoint Detection and Response, is a cybersecurity product that companies place on their clients' computers to help defend them from hackers. That software, which runs in the background on clients' machines, or endpoints, is used by cybersecurity firms to monitor for signs of attack on their clients' networks.
"It turns out that because the endpoints have crashed - the Blue Screen of Death - they cannot be updated remotely and the problem must be solved manually, endpoint by endpoint. This is expected to be a process that will take days," he added.
WHO HAS BEEN IMPACTED?
The global tech outage has affected operations in different sectors internationally including at Spanish airports, U.S. airlines and Australian media and banks.
The governments of Australia, New Zealand, and a number of U.S. states are facing issues, while American Airlines AAL.O, Delta Airlines DAL.N, United Airlines (UAL.O), and Allegiant Air
ALGT.O grounded flights citing communication problems.
In Britain, Sky News, one of the country's major television news channels, was off air on Friday.
WHY ARE SO MANY IMPACTED?
With the move to the cloud and with companies owning huge market shares, their software is running on millions of computers around the world.
"The damage to business processes at the global level is dramatic," said Grossman.
(Reporting by Martin Coulter and James Pearson in London; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise
</body></html>Related Assets
Latest News
Disclaimer: The XM Group entities provide execution-only service and access to our Online Trading Facility, permitting a person to view and/or use the content available on or via the website, is not intended to change or expand on this, nor does it change or expand on this. Such access and use are always subject to: (i) Terms and Conditions; (ii) Risk Warnings; and (iii) Full Disclaimer. Such content is therefore provided as no more than general information. Particularly, please be aware that the contents of our Online Trading Facility are neither a solicitation, nor an offer to enter any transactions on the financial markets. Trading on any financial market involves a significant level of risk to your capital.
All material published on our Online Trading Facility is intended for educational/informational purposes only, and does not contain – nor should it be considered as containing – financial, investment tax or trading advice and recommendations; or a record of our trading prices; or an offer of, or solicitation for, a transaction in any financial instruments; or unsolicited financial promotions to you.
Any third-party content, as well as content prepared by XM, such as: opinions, news, research, analyses, prices and other information or links to third-party sites contained on this website are provided on an “as-is” basis, as general market commentary, and do not constitute investment advice. To the extent that any content is construed as investment research, you must note and accept that the content was not intended to and has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and as such, it would be considered as marketing communication under the relevant laws and regulations. Please ensure that you have read and understood our Notification on Non-Independent Investment. Research and Risk Warning concerning the foregoing information, which can be accessed here.
