Buggy update hit Falcon Sensor and Windows OS, says CrowdStrike

US cybersecurity firm says defect reverted on Friday, the same day of global tech outage

‘Blue screens of death’ at New York’s La Guardia Airport following the global IT outage on Friday. – Smishra1 Wikimedia Commons pic, July 25, 2024

ISTANBUL – CrowdStrike said on Wednesday that a content configuration update affected the Falcon Sensor, which protects key risk areas and the Windows operating system, causing a global IT outage last week, Anadolu Agency reported.

The American cybersecurity technology firm said it released a content configuration update on Friday for the Windows sensor to gather telemetry on possible novel threat techniques, which are a regular part of the dynamic protection mechanisms of its Falcon platform.

The problematic Rapid Response Content configuration update, however, resulted in a Windows system crash, CrowdStrike posted on X.

While systems in scope included Windows hosts running sensor version 7.11 and above that were online on Friday and received the update, Mac and Linux hosts were not affected, it added.

The defect in the content update was reverted later on Friday, the company said in its preliminary post-incident review.

“Automated recovery techniques, coupled with strategic service delivery partners, have rapidly accelerated resolution.

“We can’t repeat enough, we’re aware of the impact and deeply sorry this occurred. We want to thank our customers and industry partners for their support and assistance following the release of a faulty content update. We know what happened and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said CrowdStrike.

The global outage hit thousands of computers around the world on Friday and caused interruptions in devices using the Windows operating system. – July 25, 2024