Microsoft outage: Screens start coming back online after hours of ‘Blue screen of Death’ issue plagues airports

Many computer systems running on Microsoft faced one of the biggest outages impacting various services. Services ranging from flights, airports to trains were impacted by the outage. However, many screens that were just showing the ‘Blue screen of death’ (BSOD) have started working again. The outage has been credited to a third party cybersecurity company called crowdstrike. 

According to Microsoft spokesperson, the issue is affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. The company is also claimed they are working on resolving the situation. 

George Kurtz, President & CEO CrowdStrike has also come forward to explain the issue. Kurtz said, "CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. 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."

Crowdstrtike also explained the issue and provided a  workaround to fix the BSOD. CyberX9, a cybersecurity consultancy company, said the user should first reboot into safe mode and then delete the faulty file, and then restart it again to get the system working. Organisations can easily deploy it to all of their systems using a Windows GPO. Here’s a step-by-step guide to fix the issue: 

1.⁠ ⁠Boot Windows into Safe Mode or WRE.
2.⁠ ⁠Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike
3.⁠ ⁠Locate and delete file matching "C-00000291*.sys"
4.⁠ ⁠Boot normally.