Microsoft says EU is to blame for world’s worst computer failure

Microsoft has been accused of failing to protect its users to the point that a third-party software update caused the world to suffer one of the worst computer outages in living memory. However, the American company that owns Windows says the blame lies with the European Union.

It's the fault of the rules imposed by the European Union
According to current data, 8.5 million Windows devices were affected by the computer failure last Friday, July 19, after the Crowdstrike antivirus update went wrong.
A 2009 agreement insisted on by the European Commission prevented Microsoft from making security changes that would have blocked the update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike that caused the flaw in millions of computers, the technology giant said in comments to the Wall Street Journal.
As reported, the failure resulted in thousands of flights being delayed or cancelled, leaving passengers stranded at airports around the world. In addition to this impact, it was reported that the UK’s National Health Service service was affected and contactless payments stopped working.
News reports immediately following the outage pointed to the problem being triggered by a faulty update to CrowdStrike's Falcon system, which is designed to prevent cyberattacks. The system has privileged access to a key part of a computer known as the kernel.
Microsoft has Windows Defender, its in-house alternative to CrowdStrike, but, due to the 2009 agreement concluded to avoid a European competition investigationallowed several security vendors to install software at the kernel level.

Microsoft is legally barred from offering the same protections as Apple
Since the early 2000s, the European Commission has accused Microsoft of having an unfair advantage over other companies because of its popular Windows software.
In 2020, Microsoft's main competitor, Apple has blocked access to the kernel on its Mac computersarguing that this would improve safety and reliability.
In statements to the Wall Street Journala Microsoft spokesperson said the company could not make a similar change because of the EU agreement.
Microsoft has confirmed that around 8.5 million Windows devices were affected by the outage, saying that this is less than 1% of all machines running the software. However, Microsoft said there was a major impact because CrowdStrike is widely used by businesses.
CrowdStrike said that "a significant number" of the affected computers are now operational again and apologized for the incident.
Under the new Digital Markets Act, Europe is currently trying to force Apple to give third parties access to security-sensitive structures. And Apple has repeatedly said that the EU's impositions could jeopardize the use of its systems and the security of its users.