AUSTIN, Texas — Around the world on Friday, a variety of industries dealt with the fallout of a CrowdStrike outage that started Thursday night.
CrowdStrike, an Austin-based cybersecurity company, provides anti-cyberattack services to Microsoft and other large companies. CrowdStrike is stressing that this incident was not a cyberattack and says the outages that shut down Microsoft-based computers were caused by a software issue.
CrowdStrike sent an update Thursday night, but it accidentally included a bug in the code that caused millions of computers to be stuck in a cycle of restarting without being able to complete the process, causing error messages to appear on computers. The company has since deployed a fix so people can use their computers again.
The hours-long outage has had widespread impacts. Airlines had to cancel thousands of flights, some hospitals have reported disruptions and, in Travis County, tax offices had to shut down for the day.
Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Driver License Offices were also closed all day Friday, across the state, because of the outage.
Steve Eiland just moved to Austin from Ohio and showed up to get a new license only to find the North Lamar Boulevard office closed.
"The frustrating part is if I get pulled over by an officer, I have to explain this and, hopefully, an officer doesn't have a problem with me and I won't get a ticket or something," Eiland said.
His frustration is shared by Dan Frolkin, who stopped by to get his license renewed.
"We spend enough time in these government buildings waiting for stuff when they're working," Frolkin said. "Something in your infrastructure is causing you to be unable to provide your services to us. Your first priority should not be, you know, literally anything else but to get it back on track. Because none of us are responsible for this."
KVUE reached out to DPS. The department told us people with appointments should have been notified of the office closures, and that the DPS IT teams are working diligently on a fix to the issue. There is not currently an estimate on when Driver License Offices will reopen.
Thomas Pace is the CEO of a cybersecurity company called NetRise.
"The likelihood of this is, frankly, very low, which is further indication that I think we'll find there is a number of issues that kind of happened all at the same time," Pace said.
It's an unlikely scenario that is affecting millions.
"There's not a single ordinary person, as you put it, who is guilty of these kinds of outages and who should be impeded by these sorts of outages," Frolkin said.
KVUE asked CrowdStrike several questions via email and even stopped by the company's Downtown Austin office, but CrowdStrike did not answer any questions. Instead, the company referred us to this statement:
"We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.
We assure our customers that CrowdStrike is operating normally and this issue does not affect our Falcon platform systems. If your systems are operating normally, there is no impact to their protection if the Falcon Sensor is installed.
Below is the latest CrowdStrike Tech Alert with more information about the issue and workaround steps organizations can take. We will continue to provide updates to our community and the industry as they become available."
Other impacts in Central Texas
Hospitals across Central Texas were also affected.
Baylor Scott & White Health noted that it was impacted by the outage. A spokesperson released the following statement:
"Our priority is the health, safety and wellbeing of those we serve and our team members.
Patient care is safely continuing as we work through issues related to the technical disruption that is impacting computer systems across the globe."
Ascension Seton also provided the following statement:
"Ascension does not use CrowdStrike for systems that we own and manage, however, some third-parties we work with do. For those third-party systems that have been impacted, we are utilizing our normal downtime procedures as appropriate until they are brought back online. We have been told that CrowdStrike has corrected errors with the Microsoft update, and we are hopeful the issue will be resolved quickly."
Texas Health and Human Services also said it was impacted. The agency released the following statement:
"Several HHSC systems were impacted overnight by the global CrowdStrike outage. HHSC is working expeditiously with our state partners to address these issues. The agency remains open."
On Friday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton warned Texans not to fall for scams amid the outage. The AG released a list of steps people should take:
- During technology outages, it is important to stay vigilant
- Be suspicious of unsolicited phone calls, visits, texts, emails, or messages on social media asking about login credentials to your computer. Be particularly suspicious if someone contacts you saying they are from CrowdStrike
- Immediately change any passwords you might have revealed. If you used the same password for multiple accounts, make sure to change it for each one. You should not use a revealed or compromised password in the future
- If you believe you might have revealed sensitive information, report it to the appropriate people within the organization, including customer support or the IT division at your company