As losses mount, CrowdStrike says bug in quality-control process led to botched update

FILE PHOTO: United Airlines employees wait by a departures monitor displaying a blue error screen, also known as the “Blue Screen of Death” inside Terminal C in Newark International Airport, after United Airlines and other airlines grounded flights due to a worldwide tech outage caused by an update to CrowdStrike's "Falcon Sensor" software which crashed Microsoft Windows systems, in Newark, New Jersey, U.S., July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Bing Guan/File Photo

LONDON (Reuters) -A software bug in CrowdStrike's quality-control system caused the software update that crashed computers globally last week, the U.S. firm said on Wednesday, as losses mount following the outage which disrupted services from aviation to banking.

The extent of the damage from the botched update is still being assessed. On Saturday, Microsoft said about 8.5 million Windows devices had been affected, and the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee has sent a letter to CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz asking him to testify.