Crowdstrike says IT problems will take time to fix 11 hours ago

Crowdstrike says IT problems will take time to fix 
 
   Windows error screens caused issues for the Mercedes team ahead of practice sessions at the F1 Hungarian Grand Prix 
   The boss of cyber-security firm Crowdstrike has admitted it could be andquot;some timeandquot; before all systems are back up and running after an update from the company triggered a global IT outage.

   Experts are warning that it could take days for big organisations to get back to normal. 
   Although there is now a software fix for the issue, the manual process required will take a huge amount of work, they said. 
   The global outage has led to thousands of flights being cancelled, while banking, healthcare and shops have all been affected.
 
   The issue was caused when an update from Crowdstrike caused Microsoft systems to andquot;blue screenandquot; and crash. 
   The problem piece of software was sent out automatically to the firman's customers overnight which is why so many were affected when they came into work on Friday morning.
   It meant their computers could not be restarted.
   Writing on X, Crowdstrike chief executive George Kurtz said 'The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
   In an interview on NBC's Today Show in the US, Mr Kurtz said the company was "deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers" 
   "Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and it'll be operational,he said, but added: 'It could be some time for some systems that won't automatically recover. 
   The fix will not be automatic, but what the industry calls a "fingers on keyboards" solution.| 
   Researcher Kevin Beaumont said: "As systems no longer start, impacted systems will need to be started in 'Safe Mode' to remove the faulty update.| 
   andquot;This is incredibly time consuming and will take organisations days to do at scale.| andquot; 
   Technical staff will need to go and reboot each and every computer affected, which could be a monumental task.| 
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   Crowdstrike is one of the biggest and most trusted brands in cyber-security.| 
   It has about 24,000 customers around the world and protects potentially hundreds of thousands of computers.| 
   In a message sent to clients on Friday, Mr Kurtz said the outage was not a security or cyberattack but had been caused by a defect in a "content update" 
   "As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we're taking to prevent anything like this from happening again ' Mr Kurtz wrote.
   The description of the problem as a "content update" suggests the overnight update was supposed to be small - not a major refresh of the cyber-security software. 
 
   It could have been something as innocuous as the changing of a font or logo on the software design.
   That could potentially explain why the software was not as rigorously checked in the same way that a major update would have been. But it also poses the question: how could a small update do so much damage?