Some bad code just broke a billion Windows machines
Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike pushed an update that caused millions of Windows computers to enter recovery mode, triggering the blue screen of death. Learn ...
Are there really a billion systems in the world that run Crowdstrike? That seems implausible. Is it just hyperbole?
I doubt it's too much of a stretch, since even here in australia, we've had multiple airlines, news stations, banks, supermarkets and many others, including the aluminium extrusion business my father works at, all go down, scale this do hundreds of countries with populations tenfold of ours, it puts it into perspective that there may even be more than a billion machines affected
Yes
There is no learning, companies just move to different antivirus. The new hotness, the cycle repeats over and over until the new antivirus does this same shit. Look at McAfee in 2010, in fact the CEO of Crowdstrike was the CTO of McAfee then. That easily took down millions of windows XP machines.
Combing over it's Wikipedia article, this company already had a series of other issues.
Sucks to anyone who ever relied on them. Oh look at that, they've been acquiring other security startups and companies. Perhaps that should also be looked into as well?
It's because Windows is crap software. Just stop using anything Microsoft makes.
This was very much not caused by windows
In a way, it was. If Windows was not as crappy as it is, external solutions would not be needed.
I don't hear about billions of Linux or Mac computers going down all at the same time. I'm hearing that windows allows a simple text file change to bring down all of them at the same time.
This happened because a file that CrowdStrike pushed out, which by their own processes is not one that is signed, was immediately pushed out with one of their updates. This update was pushed directly through CrowdStrike’s own method, not via Windows Update. CrowdStrike maintains this capability in order to quickly respond to and prevent security threats. The fact that they have .sys files that aren’t signed is crazy on its own, and a huge screwup by CrowdStrike. So many companies relied upon and trusted this company because up until now, everybody considered it a great product, so it was extremely popular and prevalent. It’s been a huge wake up call for everybody in I.T.
Whoda thunk automatic updates to critical infrastructure was a good idea? Just hope healthcare life support was not affected.
Many compliance frameworks require security utilities to receive automatic updates. It's pretty essential for effective endpoint protection considering how fast new threats spread.
The problem is not the automated update, it's why it wasn't caught in testing and how the update managed to break the entire OS.
It is pretty easy to imagine separate streams of updates that affect each other negatively.
CrowdStrike does its own 0-day updates, Microsoft does its own 0-day updates. There is probably limited if any testing at that critical intersection.
If Microsoft 100% controlled the release stream, otoh, there'd be a much better chance to have caught it. The responsibility would probably lie with MS in such a case.
(edit: not saying that this is what happened, hence the conditionals)
Nah EDR is pointless like all of cybersecurity. All these compliance frameworks are just a further grift to get a slice of B2B procurement budgets. The practice of cybersecurity has caused a more severe widespread outage than any malware ever could.
I work healthcare adjacent and some providers were affected as expected. Hoping as well that those critical systems were not, but that chance is non zero.