The global IT problems did not leave Mercedes unscathed, as their sponsor CrowdStrike was the cause – All systems are working again
The global IT outage also had an impact on the Mercedes Formula 1 team. The American cyber security company CrowdStrike, whose software update led to the global outage, is one of the Silver Arrows’ sponsors and also provides the racing team’s software
As a result, Mercedes was also affected by the blue screen, which also caused problems for banks, airlines and TV stations around the world. The solution to the problem was to reset the Windows computers to the previous version of the software, which took some time.
Mercedes also had to take this action on Friday morning, both at the track and at their home factory in Brackley. The last computers to be reset were those at the command post, as they were not needed until the first practice session in Hungary.
By the start of the session at 13:30 local time, however, all computers should have been working again, so that there were no disruptions for Mercedes during the session.
According to chief race engineer Andrew Shovlin, the general disruption for the weekend was nullified and everything was put right for the rest of the weekend.
“We’ve had great support from them and all our partners,” he says. “There was a bit of work we had to do. We have a lot of computers in the garage and at the command post, and they all needed updating.”
“But we got it all under control. The impact in first practice was minimal, if not zero. So it took a bit of work, but we are now back where we need to be. “
Longtime motorsports sponsor Acronis, which has worked in Formula One and currently sponsors Hendrick Motorsports in NASCAR, has criticized the solution to the problems. Kevin Reed, chief information security officer at Acronis, says: “CrowdStrike’s recent outage appears to be due to a flaw in their EDR agent, which unfortunately was not thoroughly tested.”
“This caused widespread disruption as many installations worldwide were affected. The faulty update requires manual intervention, specifically rebooting systems in ‘safe mode’ and deleting the faulty driver file. “
“This process is tedious and leaves systems vulnerable in the meantime, which can invite opportunistic attacks,” said Reed.
