How a Faulty CrowdStike Update Crashed Computers around the World

FILE PHOTO: A man types on a computer keyboard in front of the displayed cyber code in this illustration picture taken on March 1, 2017.REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man types on a computer keyboard in front of the displayed cyber code in this illustration picture taken on March 1, 2017.REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo
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How a Faulty CrowdStike Update Crashed Computers around the World

FILE PHOTO: A man types on a computer keyboard in front of the displayed cyber code in this illustration picture taken on March 1, 2017.REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man types on a computer keyboard in front of the displayed cyber code in this illustration picture taken on March 1, 2017.REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo

Airlines, banks, hospitals and other risk-averse organizations around the world chose cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to protect their computer systems from hackers and data breaches.

But all it took was one faulty CrowdStrike software update to cause global disruptions Friday that grounded flights, knocked banks and media outlets offline, and disrupted hospitals, retailers and other services.

“This is a function of the very homogenous technology that goes into the backbone of all of our IT infrastructure,” said Gregory Falco, an assistant professor of engineering at Cornell University. “What really causes this mess is that we rely on very few companies, and everybody uses the same folks, so everyone goes down at the same time.”

The trouble with the update issued by CrowdStrike and affecting computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system was not a hacking incident or cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike, which apologized and said a fix was on the way.

But it wasn't an easy fix. It required “boots on the ground” to remediate, said Gartner analyst Eric Grenier.

“The fix is working, it’s just a very manual process and there’s no magic key to unlock it,” Grenier said. “I think that is probably what companies are struggling with the most here.”

While not everyone is a client of CrowdStrike and its platform known as Falcon, it is one of the leading cybersecurity providers, particularly in transportation, healthcare, banking and other sectors that have a lot at stake in keeping their computer systems working.

“They’re usually risk-averse organizations that don’t want something that’s crazy innovative, but that can work and also cover their butts when something goes wrong. That’s what CrowdStrike is,” Falco said. “And they’re looking around at their colleagues in other sectors and saying, ‘Oh, you know, this company also uses that, so I’m gonna need them, too.’”

Worrying about the fragility of a globally connected technology ecosystem is nothing new. It's what drove fears in the 1990s of a technical glitch that could cause chaos at the turn of the millennium.

“This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time,” wrote Australian cybersecurity consultant Troy Hunt on the social platform X.

Across the world Friday, affected computers were showing the “blue screen of death” — a sign that something went wrong with Microsoft's Windows operating system, The AP reported.

But what's different now is “that these companies are even more entrenched,” Falco said. "We like to think that we have a lot of players available. But at the end of the day, the biggest companies use all the same stuff.”

Founded in 2011 and publicly traded since 2019, CrowdStrike describes itself in its annual report to financial regulators as having “reinvented cybersecurity for the cloud era and transformed the way cybersecurity is delivered and experienced by customers.” It emphasizes its use of artificial intelligence in helping to keep pace with adversaries. It reported having 29,000 subscribing customers at the start of the year.

The Austin, Texas-based firm is one of the more visible cybersecurity companies in the world and spends heavily on marketing, including Super Bowl ads. At cybersecurity conferences, it's known for large booths displaying massive action-figure statues representing different state-sponsored hacking groups that CrowdStrike technology promises to defend against.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz is among the most highly compensated in the world, recording more than $230 million in total compensation in the last three years. Kurtz is also a driver for a CrowdStrike-sponsored car racing team.

After his initial statement about the problem was criticized for lack of contrition, Kurtz apologized in a later social media post Friday and on NBC's “Today Show.”

“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” he said on X.

Richard Stiennon, a cybersecurity industry analyst, said this was a historic mistake by CrowdStrike.

“This is easily the worst faux pas, technical faux pas or glitch of any security software provider ever,” said Stiennon, who has tracked the cybersecurity industry for 24 years.

While the problem is an easy technical fix, he said, it’s impact could be long-lasting for some organizations because of the hands-on work needed to fix each affected computer. “It’s really, really difficult to touch millions of machines. And people are on vacation right now, so, you know, the CEO will be coming back from his trip to the Bahamas in a couple of weeks and he won’t be able to use his computers.”

Stiennon said he did not think the outage revealed a bigger problem with the cybersecurity industry or CrowdStrike as a company.

“The markets are going to forgive them, the customers are going to forgive them, and this will blow over,” he said.

Forrester analyst Allie Mellen credited CrowdStrike for clearly telling customers what they need to do to fix the problem. But to restore trust, she said there will need to be a deeper look at what occurred and what changes can be made to prevent it from happening again.

“A lot of this is likely to come down to the testing and software development process and the work that they’ve put into testing these kinds of updates before deployment,” Mellen said. “But until we see the complete retrospective, we won’t know for sure what the failure was.”



Uruguay Confronts a Powerful New Threat to Its Palm Trees: A Tiny Red Bug 

A bird perches on the trunk of a dead palm tress, near Peaje Mendoza, in Florida, Uruguay, Wednesday, July 9, 2025, as thousands of palm trees in the South American country have been devoured by the red palm weevil since its unexplained arrival from Southeast Asia in 2022. (AP)
A bird perches on the trunk of a dead palm tress, near Peaje Mendoza, in Florida, Uruguay, Wednesday, July 9, 2025, as thousands of palm trees in the South American country have been devoured by the red palm weevil since its unexplained arrival from Southeast Asia in 2022. (AP)
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Uruguay Confronts a Powerful New Threat to Its Palm Trees: A Tiny Red Bug 

A bird perches on the trunk of a dead palm tress, near Peaje Mendoza, in Florida, Uruguay, Wednesday, July 9, 2025, as thousands of palm trees in the South American country have been devoured by the red palm weevil since its unexplained arrival from Southeast Asia in 2022. (AP)
A bird perches on the trunk of a dead palm tress, near Peaje Mendoza, in Florida, Uruguay, Wednesday, July 9, 2025, as thousands of palm trees in the South American country have been devoured by the red palm weevil since its unexplained arrival from Southeast Asia in 2022. (AP)

Palm trees in Uruguay are more than just plants, they are icons, much like olive groves for Greeks or cherry blossoms for the Japanese.

The treasured trees lining one of the world’s longest sidewalks through Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital, and adorn the swanky Atlantic beach resorts of Punta del Este have recently come under ruthless attack.

Across the small South American country, palm trees are falling prey to a fierce enemy measuring just 5 centimeters (2 inches) in length: The red palm weevil.

First the elegant fronds droop. Then the tell-tale holes appear in the trunk. Soon enough, the tree is tilting toward collapse.

The weevil has devoured thousands of Uruguay’s palm trees since its unexplained arrival from Southeast Asia in 2022. But authorities are only now waking up to the threat as the landscape of municipalities transforms and fears grow that the country's beloved palms could be wiped out.

“We are late in addressing this,” Estela Delgado, the national director of biodiversity at Uruguay's Ministry of Environment, acknowledged last month. “But we are doing so with great commitment and seriousness.”

The insect and its devastating impact can be found in 60 countries around the world but nowhere else in South America. Authorities first detected it in the town of Canelones, bordering Montevideo, where the insect killed more than 2,000 palm trees in less than a month.

Weevils quietly wreak destruction by boring through the open scars of pruned palms and laying hundreds of eggs inside. When larvae hatch, they tunnel through trunks and eat up the trees’ internal tissue. Death strikes within weeks.

The Uruguayan government set up a task force to combat the plague in March. In May, Environment Minister Edgardo Ortuño declared the fight against the red palm weevil “a national priority.”

As of this year, the red bug has proliferated in eight of the country's 19 regions, including Montevideo. Half of the capital's 19,000 palm trees have been infected, estimates Gerardo Grinvald, director of pest control company Equitec, which helps authorities combat the bug.

The insect first attacks decorative Canary palms, the tree in so many pictures of Uruguay’s sunny landscape, before moving onto its date palms.

“It’s an invisible pest,” Grinvald said, explaining the challenge of identifying an infestation when it starts. As a result, landowners fail to isolate and quarantine their trees, fueling the weevil's crawl across the country.

The Montevideo municipality this year earmarked $70,000 for chemical pesticide sprays and insecticide injections meant to kill bugs inside infested trunks, with the goal of saving some 850 trees in the city’s prominent Parque Rodó, a scenic urban park along the coast.

In the southeast corner of Uruguay, home to Punta del Este, a beachy, palm-fringed haven for jet-set elites from all over the world, authorities recently allocated $625,000 for efforts to dispose of infected trees and lure weevils away from affected areas with pheromone traps and other methods.

“We are losing our palm trees,” lamented Montevideo resident Rafael dos Santos as he walked his dog in Parque Rodó. “They are historic in Uruguay, and a part of us.”

As the weevil's march continues unabated, authorities now fear native trees of Uruguay's UNESCO biosphere reserve bordering Brazil will fall victim next, potentially facilitating the spread of the parasite across an unprepared continent.