US cybersecurity firm is behind the outage

This US cybersecurity firm is behind the outage disrupting major infrastructure worldwide

From CNN's Sean Lyngaas

The global computer outage affecting airports, banks and other businesses on Friday appears to stem at least partly from a software update issued by major US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, experts told CNN.

CrowdStrike told customers early Friday that the outages were caused by “a defect found in a single content update” of its software on Microsoft Windows operating systems, according to a post on X from CEO George Kurtz.

CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software — used by numerous Fortune 500 companies, including major global banks, health care and energy companies — detects and blocks hacking threats.

The company said the outage was not caused by a security incident or a cyberattack. Kurtz, in his post, said the issue was identified and isolated, and engineers deployed an update to fix the problem.

CrowdStrike’s (CRWD) stock fell 10% in premarket trading.