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Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?

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Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?

#11

Post by aristofun »

How many more cases and years you need to finally admit that windows is a shitty platform?

Yes all platforms seen bad days and have their own issues.

But windows is different - most of its troubles come from human factor - low quality people making (or made 10 years ago) low quality decisions and every new iteration is just another layer of bad decisions aimed to cover the holes in previous layer.

You can see and feel it even un ui - there is no esthetics nor real usability and never was.

Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?

#12

Post by addicted »

blueflow wrote: post #3
Nordoz wrote: post #2

CS needs some hardcore permissions to scan items on a VERY low level. So they can essentially push out shit code to screw up any OS. Including Mac and Linux. Don't see how MS/Windows are to blame for someone not testing a content update before pushing to the whole damn world. They should at least push out to a subset of users before destroying everyone's Friday!

I think this is a cultural issue with the Windows world. Look at Projects like ssh and git, who exist for both, but on Windows, they get shipped without documentation. Not even for the Windows-specific things. Want to know where to put your GlobalKnownHosts on Windows? F** you.

Isn’t that better explained by the fact that neither were created with Windows in mind?

git was literally created to develop Linux.

Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?

#13

Post by exe34 »

aranelsurion wrote: post #10

Windows and BSODs maybe still are trigger words for me, but IMO they are not to blame. Windows is the platform, CrowdStrike makes a product on this platform and their users willingly install, accept all the security prompts and use it. Short of Apple-style locking users out of their own devices, there is little they can do here. I'm not well-versed in Windows enough to be able to tell if they provide better ways and…

I think the Linux market is far too fragmented for this kind of thing. I usually wait a few days before applying any updates, and definitely don't do them when I have something important coming up.

Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?

#14

Post by millzlane »

aristofun wrote: post #11

How many more cases and years you need to finally admit that windows is a shitty platform? Yes all platforms seen bad days and have their own issues. But windows is different - most of its troubles come from human factor - low quality people making (or made 10 years ago) low quality decisions and every new iteration is just another layer of bad decisions aimed to cover the holes in previous layer. You can see and fee…

I have dealt with an apple upgrade that ignored free disk space and let users continue to upgrade eventually filling up the drive. This will happen with any company with humans that can make mistakes. And apple suffers from horrible ui issues also. Most users just tend to ignore them. On Macos, activate mission control and try to lock the screen with the keyboard shortcut.

Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?

#15

Post by tredre3 »

> Would it happen on Linux?

It absolutely would. Windows is way ahead in terms of driver isolation and stability. Most drivers cannot bring down the system (your GPU driver can crash, your screen will flicker and maybe apps that were using it will crash, but the system recovers). Not so on Linux unfortunately, any driver will bring the system down.

More recently certain class of drivers have been making use of ebpf or virt2, which helps in isolating the driver. But I know for a fact that CS on Linux is as low level as it can be.

So long story short only MacOS is resistant to this, because they've simply deprecated any third party kernel extensions/modules.

Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?

#16

Post by orbital-decay »

The code running in the kernel can do anything, including crashing the machine on boot. The only real way to prevent it is to disallow third-party kernel code.

If you're sure you don't want to freely use your machine just because third-party code can be dangerous, then yes, you can blame Microsoft for not taking control away from you.

Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?

#17

Post by fouc »

al_borland wrote: post #6
wkat4242 wrote: post #4

Kinda. Yes. Apple moved away from deep kernel extensions years ago. They are no longer permitted on their latest releases. Of course something like an EDR requires kernel level access otherwise it's too easy to bypass. But Apple has system extensions as a useful compromise. They're basically kernel level APIs that can be called by validated signed software. I think it's a good alternative to just allowing random code…

Back around 2000 or 2001 McAfee or Symantec (I can’t remember) released some virus definitions that caused Macs to kernel panic repeatedly. I worked at a college at the time which required students run it, and had to deal with the fallout. OS X was using Unix back then as well, and the foundational design didn’t save it. But like you mention, Apple does more to protect the underlying system today than they did back t…

Given the dates 2000/2001 you mentioned it sounds more like Classic Mac OS than Mac OS X (which wasn't released until March 24, 2001)

Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?

#18

Post by orbital-decay »

tredre3 wrote: post #15

> Would it happen on Linux? It absolutely would. Windows is way ahead in terms of driver isolation and stability. Most drivers cannot bring down the system (your GPU driver can crash, your screen will flicker and maybe apps that were using it will crash, but the system recovers). Not so on Linux unfortunately, any driver will bring the system down. More recently certain class of drivers have been making use of ebpf o…

> your GPU driver can crash, your screen will flicker and maybe apps that were using it will crash, but the system recovers

Only if the userspace part of the driver has crashed. It's not really relevant to what happened here (it was kernel code).

Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?

#19

Post by aristofun »

millzlane wrote: post #14
aristofun wrote: post #11

How many more cases and years you need to finally admit that windows is a shitty platform? Yes all platforms seen bad days and have their own issues. But windows is different - most of its troubles come from human factor - low quality people making (or made 10 years ago) low quality decisions and every new iteration is just another layer of bad decisions aimed to cover the holes in previous layer. You can see and fee…

I have dealt with an apple upgrade that ignored free disk space and let users continue to upgrade eventually filling up the drive. This will happen with any company with humans that can make mistakes. And apple suffers from horrible ui issues also. Most users just tend to ignore them. On Macos, activate mission control and try to lock the screen with the keyboard shortcut.

Cherry picking specific examples doesn’t prove anything.

Overall windows ux is not even close to what apple have invested in their ecosystem. It’s not even apple to oranges comparison.

Even if there are few nice and handy features here and there.

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