CrowdStrike’s flawed software update that caused a global computer meltdown last week was sent because a bug caused the company’s quality control system to miss the flawed data, the cybersecurity giant acknowledged on Wednesday.
Last Friday, airlines, hospitals, banks and a variety of other businesses were crippled as a result of a disastrous software update that saw millions of Microsoft Windows-powered computers encounter the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death.”
CrowdStrike said the update was released as a routine step in the company’s rapid response plan to update its cybersecurity systems to combat emerging threats.
However, the company’s “content validation” tool, which scans updates to ensure their stability, broke.
As a result, the flawed update “passed validation despite containing problematic content data,” Crowdstrike said in a detailed report detailing the causes of the meltdown.
Delta Airlines has canceled more than 4,000 flights since last Friday, leaving thousands of passengers stranded at airports, with the effects continuing into this week.
Microsoft said it estimated that the flaw affected 8.5 million devices, representing less than 1% of Windows computers worldwide.
CrowdStrike said it was putting new processes in place “to prevent this type of problematic content from being deployed in the future.”
Following the incident, CrowdStrike’s stock price plummeted by more than 30%, wiping billions of dollars in value from the company.
Despite the crisis, CrowdStrike shares have remained in positive territory since the start of the year.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives called the incident a “major black mark” for CrowdStrike, one of the world’s largest tech companies.
Members of Congress are calling on CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz to testify about the incident and how the company is trying to avoid similar meltdowns in the future.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike’s chief security officer, Sean Henry, said the company was “deeply hurt” by the inconvenience its mistake had caused to customers.
“The trust we’d built up over the years in our infusions was instantly lost in a matter of hours, and that was a huge blow.” Henry wrote in a LinkedIn post:.
