How the world’s tech crashed all at once

When computers and tech systems around the world went down Friday, snarling airports, closing Social Security offices and limiting jail operations, many people had one question: How on Earth could this happen in 2024?

When computers and tech systems around the world went down Friday, snarling airports, closing Social Security offices and limiting jail operations, many people had one question: How on earth could this happen in 2024? A software update from a single cybersecurity company, US-based CrowdStrike, was the root cause of the chaos, underlining the fragility of the global economy and its dependence on computer systems to which relatively few people give a passing thought. “[M]ost people believe that when the end of the world comes, it will be AI taking over some kind of nuclear power plant and shutting down electricity,” Costin Raiu, a longtime cybersecurity researcher, quipped to CNN. “While in reality, it’s more likely to be some kind of a little bit of code in a botched update, causing a cascade reaction in interdependent cloud systems.” Software updates are a critical function in society to keep computers protected from hackers. But the update process itself is crucial to get right and to safeguard from tampering. An inherent — and some say misplaced — trust in that process was punctured on Friday. Numerous Fortune 500 companies use CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software to detect and block hacking threats. Computers running Microsoft Windows — one of the most popular software programs in the world — crashed because of the faulty way a code update issued by CrowdStrike is interacting with Windows. CrowdStrike, a multibillion-dollar firm, has expanded its footprint around the world in its more than decade of doing business. Many more businesses and governments are now protected from cyberthreats because of this, but the dominance of a handful of firms in the anti-virus and threat-detection marketplace creates its own risks, according to experts.