Life, interrupted: How CrowdStrike's patch failure is messing up the world

Oh, was it supposed to be Y2K24?

Today is one of those days that will go down in history as an unmitigated IT disaster, with CrowdStrike responsible for taking systems down all over the globe. We know airports, hospitals and the usual critical infrastructure suspects have been affected, but CrowdStrike is disrupting daily life in some unexpected ways, too. 

The issue at CrowdStrike that put millions of Windows systems into perpetual boot loops has been blamed on a faulty channel file, necessitating manual intervention by an IT professional to get each system back online. 

And it's not like CrowdStrike is a niche product - according to the company's website, 298 of the Fortune 500, 43 out of 50 US states and eight of the top 10 food and beverage, auto, financial services and tech companies all use CrowdStrike products. 

Yes, but for how long? ... Who CrowdStrike protects. click to enlarge

What that means for IT professionals is clear: A long weekend. What it means for everyone else is that day to day life isn't going to feel quite normal today - and it might take some time for things to get back that way.

In other words, it's going to be an interesting Friday.

In case you need it, here's a manual workaround for Windows systems broken by CrowdStrike:

1. Boot into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment
2. Go to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory
3. Delete the file matching C-00000291*.sys
4. Reboot as normal

The day the world BSODed still

Reactions to the outage have been pouring in from around the world. With such a wide reach, outages like these quickly show how fundamental to day-to-day life CrowdStrike (and Microsoft) have become. 

Take, for example, in the city of London, where taxi drivers haven't been able to reliably take card payments. One driver speaking to the BBC said around 95 percent of his customers use cards, and that he's already had to turn people away who didn't have cash. 

Employees at Starbucks have taken to Reddit to warn customers that their systems were down too, and those that have managed to get them back online have been left with partially-working machines, no ability to print tickets to track orders and no way to take online orders for pickup.

Depending on how quickly things are fixed, this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix could also be affected - at least for one racing outfit. Mercedes' F1 team, of whom CrowdStrike is a major sponsor, has reported that their systems have been disrupted by the outage, making it unclear whether the team would be ready for the first practice later today. 

Even the news anchors at Bloomberg Radio have had their lives disrupted, with one saying this morning that the elevator in their building wasn't working due to the CrowdStrike patchpocalypse. 

While this issue doesn't appear to be Microsoft's fault, it does raise the specter of recent cybersecurity troubles the company has experienced, and how the Windows-maker's massive reach into critical infrastructure has turned it into a potential national security threat.

CrowdStrike will have rightfully earned a spot next to Microsoft after this incident, and here's hoping the world takes a different tack - ignoring Mirosoft's problems as has largely been the case at the governmental level so far.

So, how has CrowdStrike had a non-IT impact on your life today? ®