CrowdStrike

My employer uses 365 and there were no noticeable problems while I was working remote today. CS is not a vendor that my employer has used to manage security over its network which I imagine they are very happy about today.
The 365 issue was fixed quickly overnight.

The fun with the Crowdstrike problem is the computers couldn't boot to be able to get the corrected update. However, by the time I woke up today my phone was full of text messages about it and they had the procedure to boot the work computers into safe mode so it could get the corrected update.
You have to wonder how they sent out a half baked update to their huge client base without sufficient (any?) regression testing to identify that there was an issue.
I'd love to hear the true story of what happened. Did someone jump the gun, did they get too cocky and think there couldn't be any issues, or what?

Not always. I’ve did multiple reboots on my old PC to get it to behave and there wasn’t an advisory from MS. They’ve gotten better at it (I’m on Office 365).
Sometimes it seems like there isn't an update that fixes the problem but more of the software eventually correcting it; which has always been darn impressive to me.

The new PC has made a massive difference I have to say.
I think Windows often gets a bad rap because we run it on substandard or problematic hardware and blame the software.
 
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According to Aaron Krolik at the NYT this not the first go around with CrowdStrike and a bad update, one back in April affected customers on Linux based systems.

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Yes, but the reason they've moved to push updates is because people wouldn't apply them if they were left to do it and that resulted in bonnets exploiting problems that'd been fixed months or years earlier.

So there are risks either way.
Many of the updates stem from the desire to consolidate market dominance. If operating systems were limited to what was necessary for hardware abstraction and essential services, hardly any updates were needed. Even a standard Linux workstation is trending toward obesity these days.
 
desire to consolidate market dominance
Wouldn't argue that point. Microsoft has put a lot of what I would consider to be application level code into the OS. It's been a slow creep over the last 30 years.

But the real problem with this is the requirements that all anti-virus software have. They need to be allowed deep into the OS into areas that sit below the driver layers and that are not subject to the same management and constraints that the OS applies to higher layers. Failure that low in the OS probably will lead to a BSOD...

I guess we may learn exactly what crowdstrike got wrong, but it's mostly a testing issue and patch release issue I think.
 
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Even if you can boot from a network, if they've got that update on them, then they have to be manually booted into safe mode & have a file deleted. It's going to be slow and painful.

Especially if your file system is encrypted and the decryption keys are on a machine you can't boot...
 
I think Windows often gets a bad rap because we run it on substandard or problematic hardware and blame the software.
Windows gets a bad rap because it’s so damn bloated that a 3 GHz machine with 64 gig of RAM runs slower than an effing Commodore 64. What the hell would happen on a 90 MHz Pentium 5? Sit there with a stupid spinning circle for 45 minutes to open a file explorer? (Literally takes almost 3 minutes to open a network folder on my work computer remotely because of all the security crap). IT’s recommendation was for management to get me a new computer. Cmon, the tasks are just NOT THAT HARD, it shouldn't take that much computer power to do simple operating system things. When running a local task it can solve a MoM problem that requires 20 gig for the matrix building for 50 frequencies in just a couple of hours. A decade ago it took supercomputers to do that.
 
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Windows gets a bad rap because it’s so damn bloated that a 3 GHz machine with 64 gig of RAM runs slower than an effing Commodore 64. What the hell would happen on a 90 MHz Pentium 5? Sit there with a stupid spinning circle for 45 minutes to open a file explorer? (Literally takes almost 3 minutes to open a network folder on my work computer remotely because of all the security crap). IT’s recommendation was for management to get me a new computer. Cmon, the tasks are just NOT THAT HARD, it shouldn't take that much computer power to do simple operating system things. When running a local task it can solve a MoM problem that requires 20 gig for the matrix building for 50 frequencies in just a couple of hours. A decade ago it took supercomputers to do that.
I paid around $125 for a 3Ghz, 16 GB referb computer on ebay, got a free upgrade to W11 and run blueiris with 8 HD cameras and 4, 4K cameras 24/7. Run additional anti-virus, firewall and VPN and on top of that I'll often have 4 different types of browsers open and have watched 2 different streaming movies at once with VLC playing a 2 direct streams from video cameras on a 7" screen next to the main one and it never even flinches.
 
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According to Aaron Krolik at the NYT this not the first go around with CrowdStrike and a bad update, one back in April affected customers on Linux based systems.

View attachment 1335713
I love the first part of this one because when this happened all the Linux people were going "Hahahaha, you should run Linux"

The second part sounds like the Red Queen is taking care of things
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I paid around $125 for a 3Ghz, 16 GB referb computer on ebay, got a free upgrade to W11 and run blueiris with 8 HD cameras and 4, 4K cameras 24/7. Run additional anti-virus, firewall and VPN and on top of that I'll often have 4 different types of browsers open and have watched 2 different streaming movies at once with VLC playing a 2 direct streams from video cameras on a 7" screen next to the main one and it never even flinches.
If the computer is REALLY capable of doing all of that, simultaneously, one has to wonder WTF it is actually DOING while that stupid circle spins for three minutes. Verifying my identity perhaps? By combing through the entire FBI facial recognition database? It’s the software that sucks, NOT the computer.