CrowdStrike Bug Affected 8.5 million Windows Devices
The cybersecurity vendor says that “a significant number are back online and operational”.
The impact of the software update issued by CrowdStrike, which has affected computer systems around the world, is still being discussed.
As experts weigh in on the outage, its implications for digital trust and how long its effects will last, both the cybersecurity vendor and Microsoft are working to mitigate and ammend the situation.
The CrowdStrike breach affected only Windows systems, leaving Mac and Linux hosts untouched.
In total, Microsoft estimates that 8.5 million Windows devices have suffered from the bug. This would be just under 1 percent of the total number of machines running this operating system.
“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and social repercussions reflect the use of CrowdStrike by businesses running many critical services,” the Redmond giant acknowledged.
“While software updates can sometimes cause disruptions, significant incidents like CrowdStrike are rare,” says David Weston, its vice president of operating system and enterprise security.
Like other industry representatives, the Microsoft spokesperson stresses that “this incident demonstrates the interconnected nature of our broad ecosystem: cloud providers, software platforms, security vendors and other software vendors, and customers, globally”.
“It is also a reminder of how important it is for all of us in the technology ecosystem to prioritise operating with secure deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanisms that exist,” he adds.
CrowdStrike, for its part, explains it remains focused on “restoring all systems as quickly as possible” and says that, of the 8.5 million machines affected, “a significant number are back online and operational”.
