CrowdStrike, Microsoft, and the glitch that rocked the world
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2024
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Friday, more than 8.5 million Microsoft computers around the world shut down.
The tech outage threw our most essential systems into chaos. Airlines delayed or canceled flights. Hospitals turned away non-emergency patients. Banks, businesses, courts, government offices – all were faced with blank, inactive computer screens that many cal the “blue screen of death.” The culprit? A software update pushed to Windows devices by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
Host Elahe Izadi speaks with technology reporter Joseph Menn about what happened inside CrowdStrike, and what this incident tells us about the state of the cybersecurity industry.
Today’s show was produced by Ali Bianco, with help from Sabby Robinson and Trinity Webster-Bass. It was edited by Reena Flores and Ariel Plotnick and mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks to James Graff.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you've ever had a software update on your computer, last Friday we had the software update to end all software updates. |
| 0:11.0 | This one impacted Microsoft users and it shut down more than 8.5 million |
| 0:17.4 | computers around the world. I was |
| 0:23.0 | you know what's known as the blue screen of death. |
| 0:25.0 | That's Joseph Men. |
| 0:27.0 | He's a technology reporter covering cyber security for the post. |
| 0:30.0 | Where you know Microsoft's warning that you know nothing works it pops up in bright blue |
| 0:36.1 | with a frowny face and that's what people were looking at and when they tried to |
| 0:41.4 | reboot they would just get it again. |
| 0:44.0 | So there was no way out of it. |
| 0:46.0 | This outage happened because of a cybersecurity company called Crowd Strike. |
| 0:50.6 | Crowd Strike pushed a faulty update to Windows devices and the resulting |
| 0:55.5 | outage unleashed chaos on our most essential systems. Massive tech |
| 1:00.8 | outages are impacting airlines, businesses, offices, companies worldwide. |
| 1:06.3 | The meltdown has affected computers running Microsoft software. |
| 1:10.9 | Airplanes were grounded. |
| 1:12.1 | Flights cancelled thousands of passengers stranded in airports worldwide. |
| 1:16.0 | We're talking about 1,200 flight delays already today. |
| 1:19.0 | It's only 7 a.m. |
| 1:21.0 | More than 750 flights cancelled because of this... Hospitals had to turn away |
| 1:26.3 | non-emergency patients. |
| 1:28.0 | One of several health care systems impacted procedures at ambulatory surgery centers and hospitals |
... |
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