this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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171
How One Bad CrowdStrike Update Crashed the World’s Computers (www.wired.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
23 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

https://web.archive.org/web/20240719155854/https://www.wired.com/story/crowdstrike-outage-update-windows/

"CrowdStrike is far from the only security firm to trigger Windows crashes with a driver update. Updates to Kaspersky and even Windows’ own built-in antivirus software Windows Defender have caused similar Blue Screen of Death crashes in years past."

"'People may now demand changes in this operating model,' says Jake Williams, vice president of research and development at the cybersecurity consultancy Hunter Strategy. 'For better or worse, CrowdStrike has just shown why pushing updates without IT intervention is unsustainable.'"

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

No it crashed shitty systems run on Windows lol. Actual computers are fine.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Two quick points, given the massive impact of this eveny it is clear to say many critical systems run windows. Meaning them being windows doesn't make them any less "actual computers".

Also, the OS in this event is irrelevant. They could have botched an update to their Linux version and crashes all the Linux boxes leaving windows untouched. This was not a result of an issue of any OS but a bad update.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Linux stuff generally doesn't crash if a file gets deleted. It'll just fail to boot.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

Neither does window. A file deletion did not cause this. A human at Crowdstrike uploaded a bug to production. Bugs in production can happen on any OS, this is just a terrible, terrible look for Crowdstrike because they seriously messed up

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

I mean, the end result would be the same: Large tracts of infrastructure not loading and causing hell

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Have you read anything about this? A file deletion is the workaround for affected hosts, silly!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

I was just trying to point out that you implied a file deletion is what's causing this, and Linux wouldn't crash. This fault is fixed by deleting a file, ironically

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

They are less of an actual computers in a sense that they are not running stuff under their owner / operator control. This would happen in Linux with much lower chances, because there are no side update channels to such a critical component of the system used there.

However, to take back what I just wrote :) - I am sure rightly motivated engineers would be able to build such a security hole into Linux too, under enough pressure from bad corporate decisions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

What do you mean “no side update channels”? There are lots of software that update outside of a distro repo and lots of software that pulls metadata from the internet that could cause an error in the parser.