Last Friday, millions of computers around the world became unusable due to an update to Falcon, the EDR developed by CrowdStrike. This incident affected thousands of companies and public entities, causing disruptions in airports, banks, and supermarkets, where computers displayed the notorious “blue screen of death” (BSOD).
CrowdStrike explained that the issue arose from an update released early Friday, which included a configuration file attempting to access a memory address used by Windows. This resulted in the operating system showing the blue screen error “PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA.”
Only 1% of Windows computers were affected by the failed CrowdStrike update
Many media outlets initially blamed Microsoft or a Windows update for the issue. However, the problem specifically impacted companies using CrowdStrike’s Falcon EDR on their client computers and Windows servers.
Microsoft reported that around 8.5 million Windows computers were affected globally. Since Windows runs on over two billion devices, this incident impacted less than 1% of all Windows machines worldwide.
After the problematic update, Microsoft worked with CrowdStrike to provide solutions, scripts, and other fixes to help businesses return to normal operations quickly. Additionally, Microsoft collaborated with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform to restore affected Windows servers and virtual machines.
Despite the relatively small percentage of affected devices, the update disrupted critical services, leading to a significant global impact. CrowdStrike has since mitigated the issue and released an update to fix the bug. However, there are concerns about whether the affected Windows computers will be able to receive this update due to boot failures.
