Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is meant to serve as a discussion grounded in software engineering. It does not serve as a conclusive or authoritative set of instructions for this event. A free version of this story can be found here
Introduction
On 19th July 2024, many places around the the world were met with the Windows’ infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). Basically this screen indicates that there is some sort of underlying issue. What stood out about this was the scale of this affair and its widespread effect around the world. Banks, Airlines, Hospitals and the like were affected. The cause was traced to a company called Crowdstrike located in Austin, Texas.
What is Crowdstrike?
Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity company that helps to prevent attacks, with George Kurtz as the CEO. Kurtz was formerly from McAfee. This company was employed by Microsoft to ensure that windows systems were safe. Crowdstrike has a product called Falcon which provides some form of malware support. CrowdStrike has an almost 18 per cent share of the global market for anti-virus protection and is a listed company in both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices.
What happened?
On July 19th a sensor configuration update for the Falcon, designed to target malicious system…
