The Glitch That Crashed Millions of Computers

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Daily News, Business News, News

4.2 • 5.3K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2024

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last Friday, 8.5 million computers around the world stopped working. All kinds of businesses were impacted, from airlines to banks to hospitals. The cause was a routine update sent out by a software company called CrowdStrike. WSJ’s Robert McMillan explains how the meltdown happened and why Microsoft’s software was especially vulnerable. Further Reading: - Blue Screens Everywhere Are Latest Tech Woe for Microsoft - CrowdStrike Made Its Name Fighting Technology Problems. Now It Has Caused One. Further Listening: - The Computer Glitch That Caused Nearly 1,000 Convictions - Hacking the Hackers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Last Friday 8.5 million computers around the world stopped working. It was a massive
0:12.2	outage that stalled all kinds of industries.
0:14.8	Many of us woke up this morning and discovered we lost access to mobile banking,
0:19.6	maybe even the use of debit and credit cards.
0:21.6	Travelers here at LAX stock
0:24.0	and dealing with flight cancellations and delays.
0:27.0	Non-urgent surgeries postponed at hospitals across the country.
0:30.5	Passports couldn't be verified,
0:32.3	so real IDs couldn't be processed.
0:35.0	It affected banks, it affected UPS, it affected Starbucks, it affected Tesla, it affected the MTA. I talked to our colleague Bob McMillan yesterday afternoon.
0:47.0	There were schools that went out, hospitals, News Corp.
0:52.0	Yes, our parent company.
0:54.0	I just talked to our IT guy.
0:56.0	He's still, this is Monday, he's still trying to fix stuff.
0:59.0	Wow.
1:00.0	The crash happened because a little-known company made a mistake during a routine software
1:06.1	update.
1:07.1	It was an update that went horribly, horribly wrong.
1:11.5	A lot of people in corporate environments run this product called CrowdStrike Falcon.
1:19.0	And CrowdStrike Falcon keeps your computer safe, but it gets these updates about what the bad stuff is all the time.
1:26.9	But for some reason, this update that went out on Friday morning contained data that caused the Falcon software to blow up
1:37.2	inside the brains of Windows computers.
	...

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