SECURITY
SECURITY
SECURITY
CrowdStrike faces federal scrutiny following global Windows outage
CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. has revealed that it’s cooperating with ongoing U.S. federal investigations into its July 2024 outage that disrupted computer systems worldwide.
The company said the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have requested information related to the incident and other matters in a filing with the SEC. The Wall Street Journal reported that the agencies are also seeking details about the company’s revenue-recognition practices and the reporting of annual recurring revenue for transactions with certain customers.
CrowdStrike also disclosed in the filing that it has received inquiries from other government agencies and third parties regarding the outage and that some customers and third parties have also asserted claims or publicly threatened litigation.
The outage, which struck July 19 last year, was the result of a faulty update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor software running on Microsoft Windows systems. Distributed as part of a routine content push, the update led to widespread blue-screen errors and boot failures that affected critical infrastructure, airlines, banks and hospitals.
A report from Microsoft Corp. several days after the incident occurred estimated that 8.5 million computers were affected by the faulty update. The same report also emphasized that the incident was not a cybersecurity breach, but rather an internal failure caused by CrowdStrike.
CrowdStrike later revealed that the update caused a type of error known as an out-of-bounds memory read. The error crashed the Windows devices on systems where the Falcon Sensor was installed.
The failure that led to the outage raised concerns about the company’s software deployment process, particularly around the testing and validation of updates pushed to live production environments. CrowdStrike has since committed to changes in its release procedures to prevent something similar from occurring again.
The revelation that CrowdStrike was cooperating with authorities came after the company released its fiscal 2026 first-quarter results yesterday with a revenue outlook that fell short of expectations. The lower outlook could suggest a lingering impact from the outage that may be weighing on the CrowdStrike’s near-term growth prospects.
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