The White House and the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) have raised concerns about the resilience of the software supply chain and memory safety vulnerabilities, in light of July 19’s CrowdStrike software catastrophe.

The CrowdStrike incident, which led to the disruption of 8.5 million Microsoft Windows systems, resurrected concerns raised during the state-linked supply chain attack against SolarWinds in 2020, according a report issued by the GAO July 30. 

According to CybersecurityDive.com, the CrowdStrike incident highlights specific warnings about memory safety issues in software development, the White House said on August 1. The remarks build on a February report released by the Office of the National Cyber Director that raised questions about the link between memory safety issues and software vulnerabilities. 

Memory safety is a property of some programming languages that prevents programmers from introducing certain types of bugs related to how memory is used.