Are you a Windows user experiencing the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error? Well, you are not alone!  

In a rare event, millions of Windows users and tens of thousands of organisations across the industry globally witnessed a real blackout, all thanks to a problem with Crowdstrike’s Falcon sensor.

At the time of writing, Microsoft’s shares were down 0.71 per cent in the US, while CrowdStrike’s shares declined 3.35 per cent.

This unexpected event has left businesses and critical infrastructure reeling, with reports of disruptions at airports affecting airline check-ins.

Here are some of the reactions to the massive outage from some of the companies

What is BSOD?

Blue Screen errors (also sometimes called black screen errors or STOP code errors) can occur if a serious problem causes Windows to shut down or restart unexpectedly.

You might see a message that says, “Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer,” or a similar message.

The reason

The primary cause of the BSOD error is a significant outage affecting CrowdStrike’s Falcon, which is responsible for securing Windows computers.

Crowdstrike has acknowledged the problem and assured users that they are working on a fix.

The company says in a statement, “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.”

“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website,” adds the company.

In a statement, Dmytro Tereshchenko, Head of the Information Security Department at Sigma Software Group, says, “The CrowdStrike failure has significantly impacted many organisations globally. This includes critical sectors such as banking, stock exchanges, airports, and emergency services. Recovery protocols are in place for those affected, though a comprehensive restoration across many entities will likely be a protracted process.”

“Users who have yet to encounter issues should be able to operate without significant disruption. Affected entities are already seeing progress in their recovery efforts. At Sigma Software Group, we’ve issued detailed guidelines to our team, and our experts are diligently addressing the situation to mitigate further impact,” adds Tereshchenko.

CrowdStrike: What do you need to know?

CrowdStrike is a global cybersecurity company with the most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity, and data.

Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and world-class AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft, and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection and remediation, elite threat hunting and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities.

Purpose-built in the cloud with a single lightweight-agent architecture, the Falcon platform delivers rapid and scalable deployment, superior protection and performance, reduced complexity, and immediate time-to-value.