By Tom Warren , a senior editor and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Microsoft is

Microsoft calls for Windows changes and resilience after CrowdStrike outage

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2024-07-27 13:30:02

By Tom Warren , a senior editor and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.

Microsoft is still helping CrowdStrike clean up the mess that kicked off a week ago when 8.5 million PCs went offline due to a buggy CrowdStrike update. Now, the software giant is calling for changes to Windows and has dropped some subtle hints that it’s prioritizing making Windows more resilient and is willing to prevent security vendors like CrowdStrike from accessing the Windows kernel.

While CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in its testing software for its botched update, its software runs at the kernel level — the core part of an operating system that has unrestricted access to system memory and hardware. This means that if something goes wrong with CrowdStrike’s app, it can take down Windows machines with a Blue Screen of Death.

CrowdStrike’s Falcon software uses a special driver that allows it to run at a lower level than most apps so it can detect threats across a Windows system. Microsoft tried to restrict third parties from accessing the kernel in Windows Vista in 2006 but was met with pushback from cybersecurity vendors and EU regulators. However, Apple was able to lock down its macOS operating system in 2020 so that developers could no longer get access to the kernel.