Microsoft’s Global Outage Hit 8.5 Million Devices

• The recent Microsoft outage that disrupted multiple countries and service sectors is said to have affected 8.5 million users in total.
• This number is just 1% of Microsoft's total Windows user base yet this is a major event owing to the economic impact it has had.
• Insurance experts believe that the total financial damage could be in the tens of billions. This only includes monetary loss caused by business disruption.

Everyone knows about Microsoft's global outage by now. Previously, we didn't know exactly how many users were affected. But now we have a number - almost 8.5 million!

We currently estimate that CrowdStrike's update affected 8.5 million Windows devices or less than one percent of all Windows machines' - Microsoft

Although 8.5 million is less than 1% of all Windows users worldwide, the economic impact of the outage is what makes it so severe. According to insurance experts, the total financial damage might add up to tens of billions. Along with that, cybercriminals also tried to exploit the situation and commit financial fraud.

Many reports of phishing emails impersonating CrowdStrike support and malicious websites offering help to fix" your device emerged soon after the outage.

It's also believed to be one of the biggest cyber events in recent times. The only other incident that comes close to it is the 2017 WannaCry cyber-attack that impacted around 300,000 computers in 150 countries.

More About the Outage

The outage was reported on Friday when countless users complained about their Microsoft PCs and laptops not functioning. Basically, every time they tried to log in, they were met with a blue error screen that remained frozen. A lot of users even started referring to it as the Blue Screen of Death".

However, since Microsoft is a popular choice for businesses as well, the impact of the outage was much worse.

• Flight carriers had to either delay or cancel their flights, and processing time for each passenger increased which led to unmanageable crowds at the airport.
• Supermarkets were also having trouble processing card payments
• Hospitals and pharmacies struggled with pulling up patient records

Affected countries include the US, UK, India, Japan, Netherlands, Australia and many more.

Now speaking of the cause, CrowdStrike is to be blamed. CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company and right before the outage, it was trying to update its software for Microsoft. Unfortunately, the update file had a bug that crashed the entire system.

CrowdStrike and its CEO have apologized for this disruption. The underlying issue has already been fixed but some residual impact plague some devices. It will be a while before everything goes back to normal.

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