As far as I understand it Crowdstrike provides a anti malware
detection and prevention service to users of "Cloud Services".
The end user is not the customer as far as I can see.
It seems to have been a company that many have not heard about.
I think perhaps Microsoft is their customer.
Had no affects here as I use Linux.
Does Crowdstrike, an unfortunate name, load end users of Microsofts
cloud with their software ?
No real detail seems to be available.

Dear Bezza,

CroudStrike does not affect home personal computers - only the computers of large companies:
http://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/cybersecurity-expert-says-home-computers-should-be-safe-from-crowdstrike-outage

Another example of the stupidity of a "cashless society".

Like betting the house on renewable energy, there are reasons not to, which keep cropping up, regularly, all over the wold; but the monkeys keep gibbering and swinging from trees.

This outage has been called “calamitous”. But does anyone intend on doing anything about stopping it happening again, and again? It's not the first time, and it won't be the last.

Stock prices have dropped by over 19 billion dollars. Airports brought to a stop. Nothing working.

Imagine trying to defend Australia when the stuff we chose to depend on wasn't working. That's a real possibility.

We are assured (?) that this was not a cyber attack but what happens if there is a cyber attack by a certain unfriendly country? Do we have back-up? Probably not. We have been fooled into thinking that technology is reliable; will always be there.

Trying to run a country on wind and solar is only part of the problem.

Yuyutsu, Crowdstrikes does load the file into the end users windows
computer.
The way the problem is fixed is to put your computer into recovery mode.
There seems to be a way to do this by switching the computer off and
then on again.
That enables a cmd line mode that you can use to go to the Crowdstrike
directory and the instruction gives the name of the file to be deleted.
You can then switch off & restart normally.
Somewhere on here I put a link to a site that has the process shown.
It is because the problem is in the users machine that has made it
such a long winded problem.
Crowdstrike cannot get access to the end windows computers to fix the
problem, it has to be done on the users computer.
I think this "trick" will energise the hackers to try it themselves.
Perhaps MS can work out a way to stop that.

That article is correct in that if you have a windows computer and do
not use a business system that keeps its files and data on MS cloud
then you will not have a problem.
When you connect to such a system then you are the end user of MS cloud.
That opens it up for Crownstrike to send the file to you.

That is how I understand this all came about and why it took so long
to get everything up & running.
It probably explains why I saw some Woolies terminals working and a
row of them all blue screens. Someone on woolies staff was fixing them
one at a time. They then had to rush off to other shops.

Dear Bezza,

«That article is correct in that if you have a windows computer and do
not use a business system that keeps its files and data on MS cloud
then you will not have a problem.»

And subscription to such systems cost a lot as they are meant for a minimum of 1,000 users. No end-user would subscribe to them "by accident".

«The way the problem is fixed is to put your computer into recovery mode.
There seems to be a way to do this by switching the computer off and
then on again.
That enables a cmd line mode that you can use to go to the Crowdstrike
directory and the instruction gives the name of the file to be deleted.»

And even if you are not an expert and don't know the exact name of that file, you can simply use the control-panel to uninstall the Crowdstrike software. You need to know of course that Crowdstrike is the problem, but that is all over the news. If you still have faith in them, you can then re-install Crowdstrike later once the problem was fixed.

From what I have seen commented the cost for the end user is US $50.
Presumably per each PC & ie Woolies per shopper terminal.
Many people seem to spend a lot more than that to the various virus
hacker protection software for their Windows PC.
I get scam emails daily trying to kid me my protection software is
due for renewable, hundreds of dollars some of them.
As I do not use any of that stuff just delete.

Larry C. Johnson and Bill Binney on the CrowdStrike and the Russian Hack of the DNC Emails
http://youtu.be/1jXrkDJRtSw