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Microsoft's global sprawl under fire from regulators after Windows outage

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Microsoft's global sprawl under fire from regulators after Windows outage

#31

Post by amluto »

I’m not a regulator, but I think the solution may actually be to break up Microsoft.

Right now, there is a product that is critical to the economy: Windows. By “Windows” I mean the OS, its security mechanisms, and its update mechanisms. Changing Windows to a multi-source model seems challenging, to say the least. Right now, though, Windows is not merely single-source, but that single source also makes OneDrive, Office, a not-very-secure cloud offering, ads, AI, etc. Most of the revenue comes from crap layered on top of Windows.

If just the base Windows were split out, then the company behind it could focus on making a secure base. Maybe they could actively mitigate attacks, even from the rest of the layers (e.g. the “AI” recording crap, OneDrive, telemetry, etc). And maybe CrowdStrike would become unnecessary because the Windows company itself could offer adequate endpoint security.

Getting this right would be hard, but having the base OS for much of the world in the hands of Microsoft is not going so well.

Re: Microsoft's global sprawl under fire from regulators after Windows outage

#32

Post by thaithrowawayy »

dlahoda wrote: post #26
halfcat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft isn’t scrutinizing this code, at all, right? It’s not like they’re doing code reviews of every vendor that does code signing in Windows.

https://chatgpt.com/share/8eca1a08-062f-4474-9310-95444bab67... said ms tests drivers

Really? Is this the future of developers to just blindly trust a statistical text generator?

It's cool that you know how to ask a question on ChatGPT. But don't share it as if it's the truth on an obscure, halluncinable factoid.

Re: Microsoft's global sprawl under fire from regulators after Windows outage

#33

Post by krapp »

thaithrowawayy wrote: post #32
dlahoda wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://chatgpt.com/share/8eca1a08-062f-4474-9310-95444bab67... said ms tests drivers

Really? Is this the future of developers to just blindly trust a statistical text generator? It's cool that you know how to ask a question on ChatGPT. But don't share it as if it's the truth on an obscure, halluncinable factoid.

>Is this the future of developers to just blindly trust a statistical text generator?

Unfortunately, yes.

Re: Microsoft's global sprawl under fire from regulators after Windows outage

#34

Post by FireBeyond »

k8sToGo wrote: post #19
dlahoda wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is not it the case that kernel drivers are signed and approved by microsoft?

You are confusing notarized (what Apple does) and signed (what both do). The latter just allows to confirm legitimacy.

I guarantee you Apple will take zero responsibility for a failing or issue with third party software, notwithstanding the purported difference between notarized and signed.

Re: Microsoft's global sprawl under fire from regulators after Windows outage

#35

Post by jeroenhd »

gruez wrote: post #6

It seems baffling that Microsoft is getting heat for this. They didn't cause the issue, a third party vendor's software did. Even if you were trying to make an argument of "if we had more diversity it wouldn't be as bad", shouldn't you be focusing on the EDR vendors rather than the OS vendor?

Part of Microsoft's problem is that right before the CrowdStrike outage, there was an outage of some large Microsoft services, making the two look connected. It didn't help that a lot of Microsoft support consultants also ran CrowdStrike laptops, getting affected right when customers were.

But this is quite typical. Microsoft generally doesn't direct blame to anyone (anyone non-malicious at least) but in this case I feel like they really should.

Re: Microsoft's global sprawl under fire from regulators after Windows outage

#36

Post by jacooper »

amluto wrote: post #31

I’m not a regulator, but I think the solution may actually be to break up Microsoft. Right now, there is a product that is critical to the economy: Windows. By “Windows” I mean the OS, its security mechanisms, and its update mechanisms. Changing Windows to a multi-source model seems challenging, to say the least. Right now, though, Windows is not merely single-source, but that single source also makes OneDrive, Offic…

Ironically I think Microsoft losing windows won't hurt them that much, it will however benefit consumers for sure.

Re: Microsoft's global sprawl under fire from regulators after Windows outage

#38

Post by jborean93 »

russellbeattie wrote: post #28

Microsoft's culpability lies in the fact that their OS is still ridiculously brittle. How it can't seem to manage to be able to automatically roll back changes from something as serious as a kernel change is ludicrous. It's CrowdStrike's fault that the kernel was faulty. It's Microsoft's fault that it caused a never ending bootloop that needed manual intervention to fix.

The update wasn’t actually a kernel driver but a configuration file. While I agree that there should be some changes to mitigate such problems it was a policy/config file that the existing untouched driver was reading and then causing the crash (so no restore point was created).

Re: Microsoft's global sprawl under fire from regulators after Windows outage

#39

Post by jenadine »

russellbeattie wrote: post #28

Microsoft's culpability lies in the fact that their OS is still ridiculously brittle. How it can't seem to manage to be able to automatically roll back changes from something as serious as a kernel change is ludicrous. It's CrowdStrike's fault that the kernel was faulty. It's Microsoft's fault that it caused a never ending bootloop that needed manual intervention to fix.

From what I understand, the problem was not caused by an update of the driver itself, but an update of a config file that the driver uses. As an OS author, how could you possibly know what to rollback when this is just an unrelated file fron a third party? Maybe you could try to rollback the whole file system to a previous snapshot? Assuming the file system supports automated snapshots, that might work, but this also has costs.

Re: Microsoft's global sprawl under fire from regulators after Windows outage

#40

Post by shadowgovt »

In related news, auto manufacturers under fire after aftermarket modifications to mufflers cause engines to burst into flames.

Seriously, I don't know what Microsoft was supposed to do about this. People bought an operating system from them, then they gave a third party permission to modify the internals of that operating system's configuration, then those modifications broke their installations. Where is the regulatory intervention story regarding how Microsoft's behavior should change here?

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