
Following the largest IT outage in history, Indian IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced on X (formerly Twitter) that the Indian government is collaborating with Microsoft and CrowdStrike to address the global disruption. This outage impacted a wide range of sectors, including airlines, banks, TV channels, healthcare, and IT services.
Vaishnaw stated that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) is in communication with Microsoft and its partners, and that the cause of the outage has been identified and resolved through updates. He also mentioned that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is issuing a technical advisory and confirmed that the NIC network was unaffected.
CERT-In's advisory, rated critical, explained that the issue stemmed from Windows hosts with CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor, which experienced crashes and Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) after a recent update. CrowdStrike has since reverted the problematic update.
For hosts still experiencing issues, CERT-In provided a workaround:
Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment.
Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory.
Delete the file matching “C-00000291*.sys".
Boot the host normally.
Users were also advised to check the latest updates from the CrowdStrike portal. CrowdStrike, whose stock dropped over 10%, confirmed that the problem was due to an update to its Falcon antivirus software, which protects Microsoft Windows devices. The company emphasized that this was not a security incident or cyberattack. CrowdStrike's founder, George Kurtz, stated that the issue was caused by a "defect" in a "content update" and assured that it has been identified, isolated, and fixed.
Microsoft is taking "mitigation action" to address the "lingering impact" of the outage and is rerouting affected traffic to healthy infrastructure. A Microsoft spokesperson mentioned that they anticipate a resolution soon.
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