A widespread computer systems outage late last week that hit many banks and other businesses was caused by a defect found in an update for CrowdStrike software and was not a cyberattack, the cybersecurity firm announced today.
CrowdStrike released the initial findings of its internal review of the incident, which took down systems worldwide. According to the report, the flaw that caused the outages was contained in an update for its Falcon platform, which caused Windows systems to crash. Mac and Linux users were not affected. The company’s content validation software failed to identify the problem before the update was sent out because of a bug.
In a statement, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz urged customers with questions to reach out to their CrowdStrike representative or technical support.
“We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives. Our blog and technical support will continue to be the official channels for the latest updates.”
