Crowdstrike Causes Windows Power Outage Chaos at Airports, Banks, and More. Here’s What You Can Do

The biggest cybersecurity software outage in years is causing chaos around the world.

Airports, banks, stock exchanges, 911 services, public transportation systems, hotels, news agencies, hospitals, emergency services, etc. started witnessing the infamous blue screen of death (BSOD) after cybersecurity firm Mob attack Software update released.

Crowdstrike provides cloud workload protection and endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services to customers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, eBay, Visa, AT&T, and more, including 82% of US state governments.

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In one LinkedIn PostsCrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the outage was caused by a single Windows update. The issue was not caused by Microsoft itself, but only affected Windows systems. Mac And Linux Customers are operating normally. Kurtz also added that the incident was not the result of a cyberattack or hack, and that Crowdstrike has identified and isolated the issue and deployed a fix.

When the system goes down, people quickly feel the consequences.

Long lines snaked around airports around the world as the glitch grounded flights. In the United States, Delta, American, United, Spirit, Frontier and Allegiant were all affected by the outage, and while some have slowly begun to resume operations, most have not. Even when airlines resume operations, the impact of hundreds of canceled flights is likely to last through the rest of the week.

Several hospitals, including one of the largest in Boston, Cancel non-urgent procedures.

In Europe, some media outlets were unable to broadcast, airlines were closed, hospitals were unable to access records, transport systems were delayed and the London Stock Exchange opened late. In Africa, customers of two major banks Cannot pay by card at grocery stores and gas stations or use ATMs.

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Even the popular outage tracker DownDetector was down Friday morning, but it was unclear whether that was due to increased traffic or the outage.

Mike Walters, president and co-founder of Action1, a patch management software vendor, believes this type of issue occurs due to inadequate testing scenarios and that rolling out updates in stages could have prevented this issue from becoming so severe.

If you are suffering from a Blue Screen of DeathStarting your computer in Safe Mode or Windows Recovery Environment is a reported temporary solution. Some system administrators on a Reddit thread shared this fix. Here is the how to boot windows into safe mode or Windows Recovery Environment:

• Press and hold the power button for 10 seconds to completely turn off the device.
• Press the power button again to turn the device back on.
• When you see the first sign that Windows has started, usually the manufacturer logo, hold the power button for 10 seconds to turn off the device.
• Press the power button again to turn on the device.
• When Windows restarts, hold the power button for 10 seconds to turn off the device.
• Press the power button again to turn on the device.
• Allow your device to reboot into Automatic Repair Mode and select Advanced Options to enter the Windows Recovery Environment.
• Once there, select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup settings > Restart.
• After your device restarts, you will see a list of options. Select option 5 from the list or press F5 to enter Safe Mode with Networking.
• Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike folder.
• Delete the “C-0000029*.sys” file and your system should boot normally.