top of page

Crowdstrike's Global Blue Screen of Death

By Harith A.R

Edited by Farah Liyana

The fatal error of Blue Screen of Death | Credit: Forbes


GOMBAK, 23rd of July 2024: This week happens to be one of the most shocking digital events where computers around the world experience a sudden “blue screen of death”. This happens when there's an anomaly within the system that appears to cause malfunction within the computer software. 


The issue starts with a bug or problem inside the software created with Microsoft's Crowdstrike app that contains one tiny but critical error inside the code that causes the issue. 


Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity company that produces its primary product, Falcon which is designed to block malware and hackers. Falcon is used by more than 1000 companies. 


The incident caused a global outage which was triggered by a malfunction in a recent update provided by Crowdstrike through the Falcon's internal software code. This update accidentally disrupted the software which led to computers running Windows OS to crash and displayed the dangerous Blue Screen of Death. The problem occurs worldwide, even for Malaysian users who use Microsoft software that contains products from Crowdstrike.


Crowdstrike's CEO, George Kurtz has apologised to the public and claims that the issue is not caused by an attack from any form of cyber threats but rather a faulty piece of code that caused the internal error. 


The company has since issued a prompt fix. However, it can take a lot of time to fix as the error has caused major disruptions to companies that rely on the Windows Operating System. For example, many airports experienced major delays and cancellations, health services in countries like Germany and other parts of the world faced critical malfunctions, and payment systems worldwide were affected as well. 


Some users may wonder how to fix this issue if it still occurs on their devices. According to Forbes, a simple reboot of your computer could easily fix it. However, those who still experience a prolonged issue can try booting their computer in Safe Mode first or the Windows Recovery Environment then navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory. The users must then delete the file titled “C-00000291*.sys.” which can help the system to boot without the Crowdstrike software within the local system.***


Comments


bottom of page