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Resolved · Infrastructure · Jul 19, 2024 · Impact ●●●●● 5/5

Faulty CrowdStrike update crashes millions of Windows machines worldwide

Outcome

A defective Falcon sensor configuration update bluescreened roughly 8.5 million Windows devices; CrowdStrike shipped a fix within hours, but airlines, hospitals, banks and broadcasters spent days recovering.

On 19 July 2024, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike pushed a faulty configuration update that sent Windows machines running its Falcon sensor into boot loops. Airports, hospitals and financial institutions ground to a halt in what was widely called one of the largest IT outages in history. A fix went out the same day, but many affected machines needed manual recovery.

Updates
Jul 24

CrowdStrike's preliminary post-incident review attributed the crash to a bug in its content validator that let a defective Rapid Response Content update reach production.

crowdstrike.com
Sources
#crowdstrike  #windows  #outage Last verified Aug 17, 2026