Cybersecurity
CrowdStrike’s Tests Failed to Flag Bug Behind Epic Crash
- Company says safety mechanism failed, allowing flaw to go out
- CrowdStrike will improve protocols and stagger future updates
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CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., the cybersecurity company at the center of massive global IT outages, said that a bug in a quality-assurance tool the company uses to check updates for mistakes allowed flawed data to go out to customers, causing last week’s meltdown.
On Friday, the company pushed through an update for Windows machines via a rapid-response mechanism, meant to respond quickly to changing threats. That update contained a critical flaw. CrowdStrike’s “content validator,” which is supposed to test updates for errors before they go out, malfunctioned and let the bug pass through, the company said in an incident report published on Wednesday.