Remember that Friday, July 19, 2024? A day that turned into a badly scripted action movie for Microsoft and CrowdStrike. Well, if you missed the whole mess, let me tell you the story of an epic digital chaos that hit millions of users worldwide.
It all started with a simple CrowdStrike update, an antivirus software meant to protect us from digital criminals. But instead of doing its job, it unleashed an apocalypse of blue screens and cascading crashes.
8.5 million devices affected, screams of desperation and tears from desperate geeks: it was total panic!
The cause? A small corrupted file, the infamous file 291, which had the power to crash systems like a runaway domino.
The moral of the story? Maybe avoid delegating security updates to multinational corporations that only sell proprietary software? It’s time to rediscover the benefits of locally managed software, especially if open source. Managing software locally requires some effort, but it’s worth it for more autonomy and security over our technology.
The next time CrowdStrike releases an update, take a deep breath, go for a walk in the fresh air and come back to your PC calmly… maybe the incident will have already resolved itself!
