New Delhi: Microsoft is attributing a global spate of computer crashes and the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) to stringent European Union regulations.
The significant outage, which occurred last Friday and is considered one of the largest in recent memory, was precipitated by a flawed security update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
The problem dates back to a 2009 mandate from the European Commission, which, according to Microsoft, prevented the company from implementing certain security measures that could have thwarted the troublesome update, as reported by Gizmodo.
Microsoft contends that due to the restrictions of its agreement with the EU, approximately 8.5 million computers worldwide suffered failures, a figure reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The fallout from the outage was extensive and acute, with thousands of flights delayed or cancelled, stranding passengers at airports worldwide. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) encountered significant disruptions, contactless payment systems failed, and some US states had to shut down their 911 emergency services. Major stock exchanges, including the London Stock Exchange, were compelled to cease operations.
The source of the issue was pinpointed as a defective update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon system, a cybersecurity solution intended to ward off cyberattacks. Falcon is granted privileged access to a vital part of computers known as the kernel.
While Microsoft offers Windows Defender as an alternative security tool to CrowdStrike, the 2009 agreement mandated that Microsoft permit the installation of multiple security providers’ software at the kernel level.
This accord originated from protracted allegations by the European Commission, dating back to the early 2000s, accusing Microsoft of exploiting its dominant Windows software to unfairly benefit over other companies.
