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According to foreign media reports, on July 23, an IT outage on Friday affected as many as 8.5 million Windows devices due to problems with Crowdstrike's antivirus update.

Microsoft said the European Union was responsible for the world's largest information technology outage on Friday, which was caused by a faulty security update.

Microsoft said in comments to The Wall Street Journal that the 2009 agreement upheld by the European Commission meant it could not make security changes to block an update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike that caused problems on about 8.5 million computers.

Thousands of flights were delayed or cancelled, leaving passengers stranded at airports around the world, the UK's National Health Service was affected and contactless payments were not working. The problem was caused by a flawed update to CrowdStrike's Falcon system, which is designed to prevent cyberattacks. It had privileged access to a critical part of the computer, known as the kernel.

Microsoft has Windows Defender, its in-house alternative to CrowdStrike, but thanks to a 2009 agreement to avoid a European competition investigation, Microsoft allows multiple security providers to install software at the kernel level.

Apple in EU spotlight over competition rules

Since the beginning of this century, the European Commission has accused Microsoft of having an unfair advantage over other companies with its popular Windows software.

Microsoft's main rival Apple blocked access to the kernel on its Mac computers in 2020, arguing that it would improve security and reliability.

A Microsoft spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that the company was unable to make similar changes because of the EU agreement.

Microsoft confirmed that up to 8.5 million Windows devices were affected by the outage, and said that was less than 1% of all devices using the software. However, the company said that because CrowdStrike is widely used by enterprises, the impact was significant.

CrowdStrike said a large number of the affected computers were back online and apologized for what happened.

Europe is currently trying to force Apple to grant access on its iPhones to allow the use of alternative app stores and web browsers, under the new Digital Markets Act.

Euronews Next has contacted Microsoft for comment.