The CrowdStrike outage affected an estimated 8.5 million Windows computers worldwide, causing a global blue screen of death. The issue was attributed to a faulty update in their Falcon Sensor endpoint protection software, specifically its kernel driver, which resulted in an out-of-bounds memory read due to a null pointer dereference or possibly an uninitialized variable. This highlights the importance of thorough testing and validation of code updates, particularly for critical components like kernel drivers that interact directly with hardware and have significant system-level implications. The incident also underscores the need for early detection and mitigation of reliability and maintainability issues in software development, which can have far-reaching consequences like this outage.