The CEO of the cybersecurity firm behind the IT outage around the world has apologised to every effected by the problem.
But he admits that it could be ‘some time’ before everything is back online. George Kurtz revealed it was a ‘defect’ in an update that has caused problems for Microsoft Windows users but Mac and Linux have gone untroubled.
The CrowdStrike CEO has assured users that it wasn’t a security incident or a cyber attack and the bug has been identified as they try to get it fixed.
He wrote on X: “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
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“We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.
“We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”
Mr Kurtz also spoke to the Today Show in the US on NBC and said the company is ‘deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers.
He added the firm is “working with each and every customer to make sure that we can bring them back online”, confirming a “bug” related to a software update was the cause of the outage.
Mr Kurtz said there had been a “negative interaction” between the update and Microsoft’s operating system, which had then caused computers to crash, sparking the outage.
The CrowdStrike founder could not give a timeframe for when the issue might be fully resolved, admitting it will be “some time” before all users who did not automatically reboot when receiving the company’s fix are back online.
Asked if he ever thought an outage of this scale was possible, Mr Kurtz said: “Software is a very complex world and there’s a lot of interactions, and always staying ahead of the adversary is a tall task.”
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