George Kurtz, the CEO of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, is under the spotlight for a massive tech failure. Last Friday, a faulty update from CrowdStrike caused a worldwide tech outage that disrupted banks, airlines, retailers, and more. Shockingly, this isn’t Kurtz’s first rodeo with a tech catastrophe.
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From 2009 to 2011, Kurtz was a customer-facing Field Chief Technology Officer at McAfee, another major name in cybersecurity. In 2010, McAfee released a flawed update that mistakenly identified a critical Windows file, “svchost.exe,” as a virus. This critical error crashed millions of computers and got them stuck in reboot loops. At McAfee, Kurtz was responsible for supporting customers and making the business more resilient.
Just like last week, the only fix was a manual intervention, and similarly, that whole debacle created chaos for countless users and businesses.
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The Ripple Effects Of The CrowdStrike Update Mess
The impact of CrowdStrike’s faulty update was massive. According to Business Insider, major airlines like American, United, and Delta had to ground flights, leaving thousands of passengers stranded and causing travel chaos. European airlines, like Ryanair, also faced big delays and told passengers to arrive early to deal with the mess.
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) reported issues with appointment and patient record systems, even cancelling medical procedures and appointments. In Germany, hospitals were forced to also cancel elective operations, adding to the strain on health care providers already dealing with other pressures.
Retail operations were not spared either. Some Speedway gas stations in the U.S. had to close because digital gas pumps failed, and others could not accept payments.
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Why Did This Happen?
The root cause of the disaster was a defect in a single update for Windows provided by CrowdStrike that led to widespread system failures. The issue was not the result of a cyberattack but rather a critical flaw in the update’s coding. When released, it triggered a series of malfunctions in less than 1% of Windows machines.
Despite the relatively small percentage, the number of systems affected was enough to create global chaos. In response to Kurtz’s tweet, one Twitter user pointed out how little it takes to “bring down half the computers around the world.”
CrowdStrike’s immediate response included identifying the issue, isolating it, and deploying a fix. However, Microsoft stated that some users fixed their problems by rebooting the system 15 times.
CrowdStrike’s admission that such a huge error was not caught during testing has raised serious questions about its internal processes and safeguards.
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History Repeating Itself
This incident has brought George Kurtz’s past into sharp focus. In 2010, as McAfee’s CTO, Kurtz was at the helm during another significant tech failure. The problem was eerily similar, and the fallout was substantial, with McAfee facing severe criticism and a loss of customer trust.
Since Thursday, the day before the outage, CrowdStrike stock has lost around 21% of its value, and Kurtz’s net worth plummeted from $3.2 billion to $2.6 billion on Wednesday, the 24th, according to Forbes.
Given this history, many are now wondering how Kurtz, with all his experience, let something like this happen again at CrowdStrike. The company has promised to investigate thoroughly to determine how the mistake happened and to implement measures to prevent it. However, fixing the damage to its reputation might take a while.
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