Software update glitch hits a billion people

New code released by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused a super-glitch July 19 that disrupted everything from airline flights to credit card functioning to hospital surgeries, impacting the lives of a billion people. The catastrophic event exposed the fragility of the capitalist system and its drive to maximize profits.

CrowdStrike is a U.S.-based company which in 2023 had over $2 billion in sales of untouchable stuff known as security software. Its customer base is around 29,000 distinct entities, including over half the companies in the Fortune 100, plus major institutions like government agencies, universities and insurance companies. It provides a large proportion of the security software installed by small- and medium-sized companies.

According to Microsoft, over 8 million computers running Microsoft’s Windows have CrowdStrike software installed.

The way that CrowdStrike officials decided to update the system for detecting intrusions, which require updating frequently to repel threats from hackers, is to issue a configuration update that the software in the target system knows how to download. The bad update “triggered a logic error resulting in a system crash and blue screen (BSOD) on impacted systems.” (crowdstrike blog, July 20) 

Microsoft representatives said there was an earlier outage affecting U.S. users of Azure, its cloud service system. Some users may have been affected by both.

As of July 21, most of the systems disrupted by the bad patch have been recovered, but CrowdStrike officials said that some systems might take weeks or months — probably those tied to a database that was damaged when the operating system came down hard.

Systems impacted

The first sign of the outage was in the airport in Sydney, Australia, around 3 p.m. Friday, July 19, local time, when the information screens started showing “the blue screen of death.” The outages quickly spread to other major airports in Australia and New Zealand and then to major airports throughout the world.

Russian airports and computer systems were not affected, because CrowdStrike, following the sanctions placed on that country, ceased operating there in 2022. China has its own software, so almost all Chinese airports and airlines continued operating.

Financial institutions were also affected. Thousands of workers who get paid by having money transferred into their accounts or retirees who get their pensions the same way — very common in some countries — found that they couldn’t get cash, since the transfers had not completed. Stock traders, brokers and insurance agents also had problems if the systems they used were based in Windows.

Hospitals couldn’t display patients’ information and histories, control medicines or record doctors’ orders. Those which were affected only did emergency surgeries and closed their clinics. The 911 emergency system broke down. 

Doctors and nurses in various countries had sporadic problems opening doors, since their card keys were tied to Windows servers. Representatives of Kaiser Permanente, which cares for 12.6 million members, said all of its hospitals’ systems were affected. It needed to switch to backup systems.

Railroads, subway systems and buses also had major problems with passenger and operational tasks that were automated by Windows software. Logistics companies like UPS and FedEx also reported disruptions.

Role of workers in the Internet

CrowdStrike designed its update system to operate without human, more precisely, worker oversight. There are a number of schemes and paradigms that would avoid a catastrophe but require workers to administer them.

Now, when a logical mistake in a few lines of code causes big social and economic upheavals in many countries in a few hours after it’s published, it’s hard to remember that the Internet is barely 40 years old, and the worldwide web only became widely used in 1993-1994.

The hundreds of billions of dollars that the big internet companies — Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Amazon, Alphabet (better known as Google) — report as their profits testify to how much of their own labor force they have been able to replace. The need for computer-savvy labor in restoring the systems damaged in the CrowdStrike catastrophe makes it clear that workers are still required for the internet to function, just as workers in general are essential for the economy to function.