Who knew that a simple security update could bring businesses around the world to their knees? But that’s exactly what happened with the CrowdStrike bug. If your Windows computer is one of the victims, hold on tight: there are solutions.
Your job is to protect the world’s computers from evil hackers. Then one morning, you realize that your latest update has turned millions of PCs into pretty paperweights. Welcome to the world of CrowdStrike, which has just lived every self-respecting geek’s worst nightmare.
It’s called “the biggest computer outage in history”, you can find our live coverage here.
But what exactly happened?
Basically, CrowdStrike sent a nightly update to its customers (and there are a lot of them). Except that this update contained a small bug, a grain of sand in the well-oiled machine of cybersecurity. Result? Computers that start rebooting in a loop.
The problem is that this bug doesn’t just affect Grandma Germaine’s little PC (which we respect). We’re talking about big companies, airports, banks, hospitals… Imagine the chaos: planes grounded, bank transactions in stand-byand employees watching helplessly as the blue screen of death scrolled by over and over again.
Mission Impossible: Fix Your PC
So how do we get out of this mess? Hold on tight, it might be a bit technical (but we promise, we’ll try to make it fun).
First thing to know: if your PC has already entered the infernal dance of reboots, it’s not by frantically pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del that you’re going to fix things. No, this is the “open heart surgery” category of computing.
CrowdStrike has published instructions for the brave souls who dare to venture into the bowels of their machine. Basically, you have to put the computer in safe mode, then delete the offending file. Sounds simple enough, right?
Once in this cozy environment, head to the file C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike. There you need to find and delete a file that looks like C-00000291*.sys.
For businesses, it’s even more fun. You’re going to have to do this on hundreds, maybe thousands of computers… well, not really.
Can CrowdStrike solve the problem remotely?
Now the big question: Can CrowdStrike fix the problem remotely? It’s complicated. They’ve fixed the faulty update, which means computers that haven’t yet downloaded the problematic software are saved. Phew!
But for PCs already affected, it’s a different story. They’re stuck in that infamous reboot loop, making it difficult to update remotely.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said some computers were able to receive the patch automatically during their reboot cycle.
But for many others, manual intervention is required. And here we enter the realm of high-flying computer tinkering. This will take time, a lot of time.
Source: www.frandroid.com
