Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has issued an apology for the massive disruption caused by a recent software update that affected around 8.5 million Microsoft devices worldwide. The company reported on Sunday that a significant number of impacted devices are now back online and operational. CrowdStrike claims it has been working around the clock to restore affected systems. They have successfully brought many devices back online and are collaborating with customers to test a new technique designed to speed up the remediation process. This technique is being rolled out as an opt-in option to further accelerate system recovery. "We understand the profound impact this has had on everyone," CrowdStrike stated. "We know our customers, partners, and their IT teams are working tirelessly, and we’re profoundly grateful. We apologise for the disruption this has created. Our focus is clear: to restore every system as soon as possible."What happened? On July 19, 2024, at 04:09 UTC, CrowdStrike released a sensor configuration update to Windows systems as part of their Falcon platform’s ongoing operations. This update triggered a logic error, resulting in system crashes and Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) errors on affected systems. The issue was identified and corrected by 05:27 UTC on the same day.Impact The outage affected customers using Falcon sensor for Windows version 7.11 and above, who were online between 04:09 UTC and 05:27 UTC on July 19, 2024. Systems that downloaded the updated configuration during this period were susceptible to crashes. Many airlines across the globe, that were using services from Crowdstrike were impacted by the outage, causing significant delays. Airports displays were seen with the ‘Blue Screen of Death’. The impact was also spread across other sectors as many corporates shared that the glitch had made their system unusable.