CrowdStrike boss says 97% of crashed systems fixed

A week after a faulty update caused a global IT outage that grounded flights and knocked TV stations off-air, the boss of CrowdStrike has revealed nearly all systems are back online.

In a post on LinkedIn, George Kurtz said "over 97%" of systems running its software were back online as of 25 July.

Microsoft previously estimated 8.5 million machines had been disabled by a bug in CrowdStrike's software.

That figure, and Mr Kurtz's estimate of the percentage fixed, suggests approximately 250,000 devices remain offline.

The CrowdStrike chief executive thanked the "tireless efforts" of customers and staff as he apologised again for the incident.

"While I can’t promise perfection, I can promise a response that is focused, effective, and with a sense of urgency," he wrote.

However, he acknowledged the company's work to fix devices "is not yet complete" and said the firm was "committed to restoring every impacted system".

The BBC has asked CrowdStrike for more details about the systems that remain offline, and why they have not yet been fixed.

Bringing systems back online has proved to be a time consuming process.

On Friday last week, solutions were shared online both by CrowdStrike and Microsoft within 24 hours of the problem being first reported.

But the remedies, which included restarting machines in safe mode and deleting the faulty file, required people to be able to physically access devices, which proved difficult in some cases.

Microsoft has since released a tool to speed up the process, and Mr Kurtz said the development of automated recovery tools had "enhanced" recovery efforts.

CrowdStrike has since provided more detail about how the issue arose in a Preliminary Incident Review - and has committed to a number of measures designed to ensure it is not repeated.

But the company's efforts to make amends have also been criticised for missteps.

CrowdStrike faced fresh backlash after giving staff and firms they work with a $10 UberEats voucher to say sorry for the disruption.

"To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!" CrowdStrike wrote, directing people to use a code to access the $10 credit.

But some felt short-changed by the token of thanks, with one Reddit user writing: "I literally wanted to drive my car off a bridge this weekend and they bought me coffee. Nice."

According to insurance firm Parametrix, the top 500 US companies by revenue, excluding Microsoft, suffered $5.4bn (£4.1bn) in financial losses from the outage.