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By now you're probably aware that a certain segment of the population last week experienced what some of us in the know refer to as the Blue Screen of Death™ — causing widespread panic and chaos, albeit briefly.
Imagine not being able to
So, what happened?
The way it began was that cybersecurity firm
That update ended up bringing the world to a standstill instead.
The exact reason for why the roll out caused problems on Windows was not entirely clear, but experts speculate that a
Some
"This is not a security incident or cyberattack," Crowdstrike Chief Executive George Kurtz tweeted as soon as customers' complaints began piling up.
Naturally, questions have arisen around both Crowdstrike and Microsoft, both of whom hold a sizable market of the cybersecurity and OS space, respectively. One twitter user even
Judgment against Crowdstrike has been swift though, with the company's stock price plummeting Friday following the fiasco — wiping billions off of its valuation.
Microsoft also saw its stock price fall following the event, dragging the broader stock indices down with it on Friday as the event caused a sell off in tech stocks.
Things don't seem to have gotten better, with Dan Ives, a technical analyst on Wall Street,
CNN reports that the cost from the global outage could top $1 billion, but there's no telling yet who will exactly foot the bill. There's a very high likelihood that customers will
In fact, Ives went on to say that Crowdstrike, which was not a widely known brand prior to this event, had become "a household name, but not in a good way."
CrowdStrike CEO Kurtz also has an interesting history in that this
Kurtz was the chief technology officer of McAfee at the time, and it doesn't look like there was a lot of blow back against him at the time. McAfee was reportedly bought by Intel a few months after the event and Kurtz ultimately ended up leaving the company to create CrowdStrike.
For now, he's in hot water as US lawmakers have
Meanwhile, Microsoft
The Windows maker estimated that CrowdStrike's update affected 8.5 million devices running its operating system, which was less than 1% of all Windows machines. "While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services," the company said in a blog post.
I suppose that's Microsoft's way of reminding everyone of the
Microsoft ranked #2 on HackerNoon's
And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends! See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️
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