The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency criticized CrowdStrike for making a "serious mistake" in a post released on LinkedIn on Saturday, launching a flawed update that caused system crashes for numerous businesses and governments worldwide.
Previously, Microsoft's official blog released a statement titled 'Helping Customers Survive CrowdStrike Failure Period'. Microsoft stated that while software updates may occasionally cause disruptions, major events like CrowdStrike do not occur frequently. The company currently estimates that CrowdStrike's updates have affected 8.5 million Windows devices, accounting for less than 1% of all Windows devices.
Although the percentage is small, the widespread economic and social impact reflects that businesses are using CrowdStrike to support many critical services. This incident reminds us of the importance of prioritizing security deployment and recovery reconstruction through existing mechanisms in the entire technology ecosystem.
CrowdStrike's latest statement on global IT failures states that they have understood how the problem occurred and are conducting a thorough root cause analysis to determine how the logical flaw occurred. We are committed to finding any foundation or workflow that can be improved to enhance our operating procedures, "said CrowdStrike. As the investigation continues, the results of the root cause analysis will be reported, and currently unaffected systems will continue to operate normally without the risk of such incidents in the future. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz also posted on social media X that the company has written a technical overview of the incident and continues to work with customers and partners to resolve the issue.
CrowStrike is a leading cybersecurity company in the United States, with 271 of the Fortune 500 companies being its customers, including Microsoft, Amazon, AWS, and many government agencies (such as the top cybersecurity agencies and infrastructure security agencies in the United States) using its software. Insurance brokerage firm Marsh McLennan has stated that over 75 clients may file claims for network failures due to its global collapse event.
According to flight tracking website Flight Aware, as of noon Eastern Time on that day, over 2000 flights within, entering, or leaving the United States have been cancelled, and over 5300 flights have been delayed. Several airlines, including United Airlines, have reported that flights have gradually returned to normal, but as of noon on the 19th, a considerable number of flights are still delayed or cancelled.
In addition, United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx have stated that although their airlines are operating normally, delays in delivery may still occur due to computer system malfunctions. Among them, Delta Air Lines stated that 1200 flights have been cancelled on Friday, and there may be more flight delays and cancellations over the weekend.
Companies including Tesla, Starbucks, ExxonMobil, etc. have also publicly stated that they have been affected. Starbucks stated that there has been a widespread malfunction in its third-party system, resulting in temporary interruption of mobile booking and payment functions, and is currently addressing the related issues. ExxonMobil stated that global network failures have affected some of the company's information systems.
The crash event triggered a sharp drop in CrowdStrike's stock price, and on July 19th, "Wooden Sister" Casey Wood's Ark Investment Management Company chose to buy at the bottom.
According to exchange documents, on July 19th local time, after the crash, two ETFs under Ark Investment Management purchased 38595 shares of CrowdStrike stock worth approximately $13.24 million; Increased holdings of 38519 shares of software development platform GitLab, valued at slightly over $2 million; 16758 shares of Coinbase stock and 88545 shares of Roblox stock were sold, and 17607 shares of Tesla stock were also reduced.