Cyber outage affected 8.5m Windows devices, says Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation, an American multinational technology company, says the recent global cyber outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices.

On July 19, airlines’ operations, media, and financial services across the world were disrupted due to a major cyber outage.

Over 4,000 flights — nearly 4 percent of all scheduled flights globally — were cancelled as a result of the disruption.

Speaking on the incident in a statement on Saturday, Microsoft said the outage was caused by a software update carried out by CrowdStrike, an independent cybersecurity company.

The statement said “although the incident was not from Microsoft”, the update impacted information technology (IT) systems worldwide.

The tech giant also said 8.5 million of its devices were affected, adding that a scalable solution has been rendered by CrowdStrike.

“Given it impacts [on] our ecosystem, we want to provide an update on the steps we’ve taken with CrowdStrike and others to remediate and support our customers,” said David Weston, vice-president of enterprise and operating systems (OS) security.

“Since this event began, we’ve maintained ongoing communication with our customers, CrowdStrike and external developers to collect information and expedite solutions.

“We recognize the disruption this problem has caused for businesses and in the daily routines of many individuals.

“We’re working around the clock and providing ongoing updates and support.

“Additionally, CrowdStrike has helped us develop a scalable solution that will help Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix for CrowdStrike’s faulty update.

“We have also worked with both AWS and GCP to collaborate on the most effective approaches.

“While software updates may occasionally cause disturbances, significant incidents like the CrowdStrike event are infrequent.

“We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices or less than one percent of all Windows machines.

“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services.”

Microsoft also said its focus currently is to provide customers with technical guidance and support to safely bring disrupted systems back online.