Yes.
MS provided a kernel-level entry point that other OSes didn't need.
MS have an aggressive auto-update policy that is anti-best practise.
MS have a signed binary agreement that doesn't catch the things it is meant to.
Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?
21–30 of 52 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?
#22Windows might be partly responsible for handling corrupted files poorly. According to this other post, the offending file was filled with NULs:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41009740
Such a file will not have the right signature and checksum to be considered a valid executable. Either these were not checked, or whatever was doing the checking responded poorly and left the system in a state that's difficult to recover.
Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?
#23> 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…
> Not so on Linux unfortunately, any driver will bring the system down.
I work for a company that provides secure endpoints that are Linux based (and can also run Windows apps without issue). We do not ship Linux kernels that contain drivers that cause crashes.
Per our IT patterns and also mandated by our commercial contracts, we investigate any crashes that occur. Over the last five years, not a single crash has been caused by a device driver.
We also will never have a use for the style of security software that Crowdstrike has. Our security stack is proactively preventative, not reactive or looking for "anomalies".
So this "it absolutely would [happen on Linux]", should have an asterisk, a huge one glaring like the sun, and without said asterisk is inaccurate at an extreme.
Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?
#24How 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.
Windows and macOS are both total shit.
Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Windows and macOS are both total shit.
That's really my point.
Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?
#26I want to know who wrote the part that appears to be crashing on a file full of NULs. Cloudstrike's code or Microsoft's?
Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Youre right. The the UX is comparing apples to oranges. But if I can't can't even do a basic secure thing like lock my screen, is it though...
Apples can still be compared to oranges.
Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?
#28You might be interested in this story about crowdsec killing people's Linux VMs 3 months ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/1c8db7l/linuximage6...
Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?
#29> 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…
> Not so on Linux unfortunately, any driver will bring the system down. I work for a company that provides secure endpoints that are Linux based (and can also run Windows apps without issue). We do not ship Linux kernels that contain drivers that cause crashes. Per our IT patterns and also mandated by our commercial contracts, we investigate any crashes that occur. Over the last five years, not a single crash has bee…
It is a fact that Linux driver crashes causes a kernel crash, and it’s not that rare (like usb drivers).
Even GPU drivers cause this [0].
But good job on not having a crash from a driver so far. Raspberry Pi users weren’t that lucky for example.
[0]: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/bug-report-455-23-04-k...
Re: Ask HN: Can we blame Windows for CrowdStrike outage?
#30> 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…
Yes, Crowdstrike specifically disabled Linux systems in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41005936