R Soul on 19/7/2024 at 19:29
I'm sure it was just a hotfix and a nice thing for the developers at Crowdstrike to roll out in time for the weekend, but events have not gone in their favour. Nor have they gone in favour of millions of people who've got into a spot of bother.
One example of a news article: (
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp4wnrxqlewo)
This seems to only affect computers running Windows, but in addition to that OS being so common, there'll no doubt be other systems that have to interact with those machines. Should, or can, governments/regulators do more to allow competition so that in future, if one system goes kaput it doesn't have such a wide rangning effect?
Has it caused problems for you, even in an inexplicable way?
I'd been filling in a voluneer form to do some dog walking, but they want people to have a tetanus vaccine. I haven't, but I didn't want to be dishonest about it on the form, so I began the process of seeing how to go about getting this. Turns out the Crowdstrike problem is affecting the health service computers, so I couldn't even make a booking or get the ball rolling in any way.
mxleader on 19/7/2024 at 19:53
So far my MacBook and iPhone doesn't care about the outage, and neither does my 2010 laptop with Windows Whatever Version. The best part to me is knowing that the company that I got laid off from uses 365 for most of their operations and all of their office and production line is shut down. :cheeky:
nemyax on 19/7/2024 at 20:11
Quote Posted by R Soul
buggers up the whole world
Not nearly.
demagogue on 19/7/2024 at 20:31
My intuition is if they fragment the grid even more, it's that much more vulnerable if the system is only as strong as its weakest link. It feels like a pick your poison problem.
Well the whole Internet infrastructure has redundancy and fragmentation inherently built in; but an OS and these kinds of security systems seem harder to structure in that kind of bottom-up way with a simple universal protocol and disaggregated packets, etc.
lowenz on 19/7/2024 at 20:34
No, Linux too:
(
https://www.osnews.com/story/140267/crowdstrike-issue-is-causing-massive-computer-outages-worldwide/)
Do note that while the focus is on Windows, Linux machines can run CrowdStrike software too, and I’ve heard from Linux kernel engineers who happen to also administer large numbers of Linux servers that they’re seeing a huge spike in Linux kernel panics… Caused by CrowdStrike, which is installed on a lot more Linux servers than you might think. So while Windows is currently the focus of the story, the problems are far more widespread than just Windows.DuatDweller on 20/7/2024 at 00:49
Fortunately around here there was no such problem I guess they were using Linux or Solaris or something, no banking problem, limited airline problems.
lowenz on 20/7/2024 at 08:49
Quote Posted by Hanover Aldercash
With local police malfunctioning, I've been out committing crimes all day. Carpe diem.
You can carpe diem sleeping too (and so taking the one most precious thing in existence, TIME)
WingedKagouti on 20/7/2024 at 11:04
Quote Posted by DuatDweller
Fortunately around here there was no such problem I guess they were using Linux or Solaris or something, no banking problem, limited airline problems.
It was never about the OS, it was always about CrowdStrike being a pile of shit, because CrowdStrike on Linux also blew up. It's far more likely that your local banks and airlines just didn't use CrowdStrike in the first place.
heywood on 20/7/2024 at 13:29
Biggest things here were:
- 911 emergency calling system went down for a few hours overnight while they restored a backup
- Several hospitals went black and had to cancel procedures
- Most flights were cancelled at local airports
- Some ATMs in town were reported out
- I saw at least one big box store was offline
Since I wasn't flying anywhere and didn't need health care yesterday, it was a totally normal day for me. But maybe somebody died because an ambulance couldn't get there in time. And millions of people had their weekend plans blown up because they couldn't get a flight home on Friday. Or their holiday plans. Etc. Surprisingly, Crowdstrike stock only dropped about 10% yesterday.
Crowdstrike seems to have violated the cardinal rule of rolling releases, which is don't update all your systems at once. Also, systems that require high availability 24/7/365 should not use the continuous delivery model. And what happened to the backup systems? The emergency services, airline, and banking systems should have been redundant. Could they not fail over to the backup systems? Or did the backup systems get the same patch at the same time as the online systems? If so, ugh, see rule #1.
Software engineering isn't what it once was.
