CrowdStrike IT outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices, Microsoft says

Microsoft estimates that 8.5 million computers were disabled by a global IT outage caused by a corrupted software update from CrowdStrike. This incident, affecting less than 1% of Windows devices, has had significant economic and societal impacts, particularly on enterprises running critical services.

Microsoft emphasized the need for stringent quality control checks on updates. The outage, likely the largest cyber event in history, has sparked warnings of opportunistic hacking attempts. Users are urged to verify communications and only use official CrowdStrike channels for information and fixes