What caused the Microsoft outage? Everything we know.

Editor's note: Check out our oft-updated live blog for all new developments about the Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage

Hospitals, airlines, television networks, banks – you name it, it was likely disrupted, delayed, or canceled due to a massive global tech meltdown that took down many companies' systems on Friday.

The worldwide outages began in the very early morning hours in the U.S. and it became very clear right away that the issue was only affecting Windows-based computers and networks. But as it turns out, Microsoft wasn't to blame.

Who was behind the outage? A cybersecurity company out of Austin, Texas called CrowdStrike.

How CrowdStrike took down the Windows computers around the world

CrowdStrike is a well-known company in the cybersecurity space. The company was co-founded by George Kurtz, who was the chief technology officer at the antivirus company McAfee. CrowdStrike is publicly traded and has more than 8,000 employees. 

However, CrowdStrike isn't a household name – at least not to the average consumer. That's because the company provides cyberattack protection to businesses. CrowdStrike has emerged as a leading name in cybersecurity, serving many of the world's largest companies. This widespread client base is why the current issue impacts numerous businesses and their customers.

CrowdStrike's mission is to ensure that a company's critical data remains secure from malicious actors and to prevent hackers from disrupting business computer systems through cyberattacks. Yet, as it turns out, a mistake made by CrowdStrike itself ended up taking down the computer systems of many of its global customers. 

According to CrowdStrike, an error in a recently pushed out update for one of its products servicing Microsoft Windows computers ended up resulting in a global tech meltdown. The issue appears related to its cloud-based Falcon platform, specifically the Falcon Sensor product, which CrowdStrike says "blocks attacks on your systems while capturing and recording activity as it happens to detect threats fast."

As of publication, we don't yet know exactly how CrowdStrike's error was deployed on live client systems. However, based on the information that is available, cybersecurity experts believe the CrowdStrike update issue is related to a kernel driver-related error. A kernel is essentially the core software component of your computer's operating system. 

Usually, if there is an error in an application, a user will find that just that application won't work. However, due to the nature of cybersecurity software requiring deep access to your computer to run efficiently, an error in this type of software could result in your entire computer going down. And that appears to be exactly what happened.

Computer systems around the world are now experiencing the dreaded Windows "blue screen of death."

How long will the CrowdStrike outage last?

Once the error was discovered, CrowdStrike actually patched the issue fairly quickly. However, the update was already pushed out and any computer that automatically installed it was quickly affected. 

CrowdStrike also provided a fix for those Windows systems that already installed the update. But CrowdStrike can't push out an automatic fix to these computers either. Each affected system must be dealt with individually.

Because each computer needs this individual fix, CrowdStrike CEO Kurtz is warning that it might be awhile before the outage is completely mitigated. 

Mashable will continue to monitor the CrowdStrike / Microsoft outage and provide updates as we have them.