CrowdStrike on Wednesday released more details about the cause of Friday’s technology outage, which crippled Microsoft Windows computers around the world and disrupted airlines, hospitals, banks and other businesses.
The cybersecurity company blamed a bug in a program that’s meant to catch issues before software updates are uploaded to customers. That glitch blocked “problematic content data” from being flagged before it was sent to clients, CrowdStrike said in an update on its website.
The resulting bad data led to a critical error that “could not be gracefully handled, resulting in a Windows operating system crash (BSOD),” Crowdstrike wrote, referring to the “blue screen of death” that appeared on the screens of affected computers.
Crowdstrike also said it would take future measures to prevent similar outages, including staggering the rollout of updates, giving customers more control over when and where they occur, and providing more details about planned updates.
The company has said a “significant number” of the approximately 8.5 million computers that crashed on Friday are back in operation as customers and regulators await a more detailed explanation of what went wrong.
Once its investigation is complete, Crowdstrike said that it will publicly release its full analysis of the meltdown.
The outage caused days of widespread technological havoc, highlighting the vulnerability of corporate networks. The outage is drawing attention from government regulators and lawmakers, with U.S. House leaders calling on CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz to testify to Congress about the cybersecurity company’s role in the outage.
—With reporting by the Associated Press.
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