What’s The Deal With The Crowdstrike Crash?

There’s a major IT issue affecting a wide range of businesses around the world. Banks, airports, TV stations, health care organizations, hotels, and many other businesses are experiencing widespread IT outages. These problems have grounded flights and caused significant disruptions.

It all started early Friday when companies in Australia using Microsoft’s Windows operating system began reporting devices displaying Blue Screens of Death (BSODs). Not long after, similar reports started coming in from the UK, India, Germany, the Netherlands, and the US. For example, Sky News went offline, and US airlines United, Delta, and American Airlines had to issue a “global ground stop” for all flights.

The root of the problem appears to be a software update from the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. According to cybersecurity officials, this isn’t due to a cyberattack but rather a misconfigured or corrupted update that CrowdStrike released to its customers.

Of course, that’s the official excuse…

But some of us are wondering if there’s more to the story.