It’s the first time that a number has been put on the glitch that is still causing problems around the world.

Microsoft says it estimates that 8.5m computers around the world were disabled by the global IT outage.

It’s the first time a figure has been put on the incident and suggests it could be the worst cyber event in history.

The glitch came from a security company called CrowdStrike which sent out a corrupted software update to its huge number of customers.

Microsoft, which is helping customers recover said in a blog post: “We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices.”

  • John RichardEnglish
    5•2 months ago

    You assume that businesses operate in good faith. That they thoroughly review contracts to ensure that they are fair and in the best interests of all its employees. Do you really think Greg, a VP of Cloud Solutions that makes 500k a year, who gets his IT advice on the golf course by AWS, Microsoft, & Oracle reps. Who gets wined & dined almost weekly by these reps, and a speaking spot at re:Invent, and believes Gartner when it says spending $5 million a month on cloud hosting and $90/TB on Egress traffic is normal, has the company’s best interests in mind?

    I’ve seen companies pay millions for things they never used, or that weren’t ever provided by the vendor. You go to your managers, and say… “hey, why are we paying for this?” and suddenly you’re the bad guy. I’d love for you to prove me wrong. I’ve found pieces of progress before, within isolated teams when a manager wanted to actually accomplish something. It never lasts though… its like being an ice cube in a glass full of warm water.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•2 months ago

      There’s a big difference between “buying stuff you don’t need”, and “not having legal review a contract”, or “accepting terms that include no liability”.
      Buying stuff you don’t need is in the authority of a VP seeing as their job is to make choices. Bypassing legal review and accounting diligence controls typically isn’t at any company big enough to matter.
      I trust your hypothetical VP to not want to get fired from his nice job by skipping the paperwork for a done deal.

      Do you honestly think that Amazon just didn’t read the contract? Microsoft? Google? The US government?

      They’re getting sued, and they’re gonna have to pay some money. Cynicism is one thing, but taking it to the degree of believing that people are signing unread contracts that waive liability for direct, attributable damage caused by unprofessional negligence is just assinine.