CrowdStrike software glitch hits Microsoft Windows operating systems worldwide

A glitch in software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike led to global outages in Microsoft systems affecting businesses and governments on Friday.

The system outage had a cascading effect on services and businesses, disrupting operations of  banks, airlines, health services, television channels, as also government programmes.

Airlines were the worst affected, with planes grounded and passengers stranded at airports.

Texas-based cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike provides services to some of the Fortune 500 companies world over, including banks and energy companies.

CrowdStrike uses cloud technology to provide cyber protection directly to connected devices and systems rather than providing cybersecurity through back-end servers.

On Friday, machines running Microsoft's Windows operating system crashed as a faulty software update issued by CrowdStrike interacted with Windows.

Since the CrowdStrike software scans the core of the computer's operating system to detect threats, the software glitch led to outages in machines running Microsoft Windows operating system.

Microsoft said in a release that servers running on Windows operating system when interfaces with the CrowdStrike Falcon agent may encounter a bug check (BSOD - blue screen of death) and get stuck in a restarting state. 

According to Microsoft, the impact of the software glitch was felt at around 19:00 UTC on 18 July.

Microsoft had, earlier reported outages affecting its Azure services and Microsoft 365 suite of apps in the central US region and that these cloud services had since been restored.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the company is "actively” engaged in resolving the issue that affected  the working of Windows systems, adding that other operating systems like Mac and Linux were not affected.

CrowdStrike, however, said it is in the process of rolling back the update globally.