CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz finds himself at the centre of another significant tech disruption. The recent Microsoft outage caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update isn't his first experience with a global tech meltdown. Back in 2010, Kurtz was the Chief Technology Officer of McAfee when a security update from the antivirus firm crashed tens of thousands of computers worldwide. This latest incident, affecting millions of Windows devices, has drawn comparisons to the McAfee debacle.
On April 21, 2010, antivirus company McAfee released a software update for its corporate customers that deleted a crucial Windows file. This error caused millions of computers worldwide to crash and enter a continuous reboot cycle. Similar to the recent CrowdStrike issue, the McAfee problem also required a manual fix.
Fast forward to July 19, 2024, thousands of Microsoft Windows computers around the globe experienced severe crashes. This incident brought many essential services, including air travel, credit card payments, emergency services, and stock markets, to a halt. The unexpected disruptions left many scrambling for solutions and answers.
A post by user Anshel Sag on social media platform X highlighted the connection via Kurtz’s official LinkedIn page. He said, “For those who don't remember, in 2010, McAfee had a colossal glitch with Windows XP that took down a good part of the internet. The man who was McAfee's CTO at that time is now the CEO of CrowdStrike. The McAfee incident cost the company so much they ended up selling to Intel."
Repercussions for Kurtz The financial fallout from Friday’s outage was swift. George Kurtz saw his personal net worth drop by more than $300 million. On Thursday, Forbes reported his net worth at $3.2 billion, but by Friday, it had fallen to $2.9 billion as CrowdStrike stock plunged by 11 per cent.
The root cause of the global IT outage was a single, defective update rolled out to CrowdStrike Falcon, a crucial cybersecurity tool used by large organisations. This update caused numerous Microsoft Windows computers to crash. In his statement, Kurtz apologised for the disruption and clarified that the defect was identified and a fix was deployed promptly.
In his latest apology, Kurtz said, “I want to sincerely apologize directly to all of you for the outage. All of CrowdStrike understands the gravity and impact of the situation. We quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, allowing us to focus diligently on restoring customer systems as our highest priority.”
CrowdStrike claims a significant number of the 8.5 million affected devices are now operational again. The company is also introducing a new technique to accelerate the remediation process and minimise further disruption.