Technical Details on Today’s Outage
On July 19, 2024 at 04:09 UTC, as part of ongoing operations, CrowdStrike released a sensor configuration update to Windows systems. Sensor configuration updates are an ongoing part of the protection mechanisms of the Falcon platform. This configuration update triggered a logic error resulting in a system crash and blue screen (BSOD) on impacted systems.
Customers running Falcon sensor for Windows version 7.11 and above, that were online between Friday, July 19, 2024 04:09 UTC and Friday, July 19, 2024 05:27 UTC, may be impacted.
Systems running Falcon sensor for Windows 7.11 and above that downloaded the updated configuration from 04:09 UTC to 05:27 UTC – were susceptible to a system crash.
The configuration files mentioned above are referred to as “ Channel Files ” and are part of the behavioral protection mechanisms used by the Falcon sensor. Updates to Channel Files are a normal part of the sensor’s operation and occur several times a day in response to novel tactics, techniques, and procedures discovered by CrowdStrike. This is not a new process; the architecture has been in place since Falcon’s inception.
and have a file name that starts with “ C-”. Each channel file is assigned a number as a unique identifier. The impacted Channel File in this event is 291 and will have a filename that starts with “ C-00000291-” and ends with a .sys extension. Although Channel Files end with the SYS extension, they are not kernel drivers .
