Security software company, Crowdstrike, sent out a BSOD (blue screen of death) army today via a buggy software update, causing the biggest IT outage in history (and making it impossible for me to use my $3 Starbucks coupon!).
This post on Reddit succinctly sums up the outage: CrowdStrike are an antivirus software provider. They released an update which caused an error in a core Windows file that prevented a machine running CrowdStrike and Windows from booting up. Every affected machine needed to be fixed individually (by deleting the problematic file). Given the thousands and thousands of affected machines, turmoil ensued.
Crowdstrike CEO, George Kurts, issued a statement on social media saying the company “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” asserting that the problem “has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed.”
The bug didn’t affect Mac and Linux hosts (as confirmed by Kurts), but across the globe, Windows systems are down, causing major issues at airports, hospitals, and businesses.
Yes, the world has be thrown into chaos, but there’s a silver lining to this pixelated cloud!
While screens go blank and Crowstrike stock plummets (it’s down 11.62% as of 2:06 PM EST), social media is here FTW.
These are some of the funniest Crowdstrike outage memes on the internet…
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