The global IT outage that prevented planes from taking off, banks from serving customers, and emergency services from receiving emergency calls was caused by a few lines of code in software owned by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike proudly proclaims in its X-profile, “We Stop Breaches” The cybersecurity firm provides threat intelligence and protection against cyberattacks to a variety of large corporations, including Microsoft and many major airlines

The publicly traded company, founded in 2011, has also led several high-profile investigations, including cyber attacks against Sony Pictures and the Democratic National Committee

The company makes security software for Windows servers, and a faulty Falcon sensor designed to prevent attacks on the machines triggered the outage

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz issued a statement saying that the company is working with customers to restore their systems

CrowdStrike was founded by George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch, and Gregg Marston and is currently valued at over $80 billion and provides cybersecurity services and threat intelligence to both public sector and private organizations The company's core products are [The company's flagship product, Falcon, is a cybersecurity platform that protects endpoints on the network through a cloud-native architecture It can also detect and respond to intrusions within the system or to specific endpoints An endpoint is any physical device connected to the network, such as a server or laptop

Falcon also offers an AI-powered antivirus system that uses behavioral analysis to identify and respond to various threats Falcon is widely used by some of the largest corporate organizations on the planet

Besides directly protecting organizations to “prevent breaches,” the company also offers threat analysis services Most famously, in the 2015 and 2016 cyberattacks by Russian hackers on the Democratic National Committee, Crowdstrike removed the hacking program from the Democratic Party's systems

One of the modules of the Falcon platform is Falcon Sensor This is a system that uses sensor data to track threats and vulnerabilities in the system

According to CrowdStrike, the problem was caused by a flawed update to the Sensor software This was pushed out to the machine running Falcon, causing a blue screen of death failure and making the machine difficult to operate

Kurtz wrote to X: “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers affected by the flaw found in the single content update for Windows hosts; Mac and Linux hosts are not affected This is not a security incident or cyber attack The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been distributed

“Please refer to the Support Portal for the latest updates In addition, we encourage you to contact your CrowdStrike representative through official channels Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers

The problem is that the system administrator warns that it will not be so easy to solve the problem, as it will require a boot update of the physical USB stick The machine cannot be updated remotely because it cannot be connected online Since the problem also affects laptops, tens of thousands of machines may have to be updated before the system is fully restored

One anonymous system administrator posted on Reddit: “I'm sure even the most knowledgeable and resourceful hacking group could not cause this scale of disruption and damage,” adding: “We have hundreds of Windows servers and thousands of Windows workstations are affected by this

Overnight, CloudStrike's stock took a hit, but has since recovered as service is restored Some analysts have urged companies to be more careful with the software they deploy and have asked CrowdStrike to better validate updates [Jake Moore, ESET's global cybersecurity advisor, told Tom's Guide: “Companies, no matter how big they are, have to test their updates and infrastructure and have multiple failsafes in place But, he added: “It's not a good idea” As is often the case, it is simply impossible to simulate the scale and magnitude of a problem in a secure environment without testing the actual network”

Moore said the global IT outage is a stark reminder of how much we depend on big tech for our daily lives and businesses He said, “Upgrades and maintenance make systems and networks more vulnerable to small errors

Steve Dickens, chief technology advisor for Futurum Group, wrote in X that their software is so good and so widely deployed that “Crowdstrike will survive”

He added, “It is at times like this that we must acknowledge the importance of our IT operations teams and the tireless efforts they make to keep our interconnected lives up and running”