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

washingtonpost.com

41–50 of 104 posts

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

#41
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?

Is it baffling? Only windows computers were affected, so this provides ammunition for people who are already concerned about the prevalence of windows.

I think this is more politically motivated than actually trying to address the real problem.

However I do, think Microsoft deserves some blame, since if Windows was more secure by default there would be less need for 3rd party anti-malware software that can fail so catastrophically. But, Crowdstrike certainly is more to blame for thos particular disaster.

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

#42
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.

Added links to answer, they tell that drivers must be signed and tested by microsoft, the WHQL is part of that. Ability to do other way deprecated in 2021.

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

#43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

why do you claim i doing it blindly?

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

#44

Do some of these news agencies own Crowdstrike stock? How can you blame Windows here? For simply allowing an application that can crash the OS? I truly don't understand the angle here, besides ignorance.

From the point of view of a lay person Microsoft was caught asleep at the wheel. It allowed high levels of privileged access to their customers' systems. Anti-malware software ought to be monitored and scrutinised by Microsoft's own security teams no matter that it was the customers who wanted to/were told to use CrowdStrike. But I guess they spend too much on silly fidget-widgets like OpenAI to have a budget to watch the bottom line.

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

#45
post #41
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?

Is it baffling? Only windows computers were affected, so this provides ammunition for people who are already concerned about the prevalence of windows. I think this is more politically motivated than actually trying to address the real problem. However I do, think Microsoft deserves some blame, since if Windows was more secure by default there would be less need for 3rd party anti-malware software that can fail so ca…

>Only windows computers were affected

Because only Crowdstrike's Windows release was broken by them and they didn't fuck it up on the other OS. How is this Window's fault? It's not like that tool was binary cross platform compatible for all operating systems, like Electron VS Code, in order to put the blame on the OS. It's basically a complete different tool tailored to each OS kernel, under the same brand name.

> if Windows was more secure by default there would be less need for 3rd party anti-malware software that can fail so catastrophicall

Which Windows security vulnerability needed the use of Crowsdstrike's tool? How do you measure this security threshold at which you say an OS is so secure that you don't need a third party EDR vendor anymore? You see, here's the problem. That threshold does not exist, since security it's a continuous arms race, and EDR vendors are incentivize to scaremonger you into thinking Windows or whatever OS you use is so insecure and your employees so incompetent and untrustworthy with what they do on their computers that your multi billion dollar won't be able to survive if you don't buy their tool.

And that's partly true to some extents. You can have the most secure OS in the world, but if Bob from accounting runs a script he found online as root then all that OS security was for nothing since the OS can't magically detect that Bob is an idiot and should not run that command as sudo even though Bob has the right credentials for it. That's why companies hire these digital watchmen, to watch over their systems for suspicios behavior since neither Windows, nor MacOS, nor Linux can do this out of the box. The question remains who watches the watchmen? You're now trusting an EDR vendor with the keys to your kingdom instead of Bob.

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

#46
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?

I'm curious what people think, but while obviously CrowdStrike caused the breakage, does the Operating System not have some responsibility in not allowing such outages to happen? Especially if it's an enterprise product?

Ideas:

1. Microsoft themselves could potentially enforce a gradual rollout on updates (did the update go through windows updates?)

2. Have better automatic recovery options, could windows have detected the bad driver and reverted it automatically?

3. just generally be more resilient, why should one bad driver take everything down?

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

#47
post #21
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>by approval is decentralized Translation: it's up to whoever is the sysadmin is, which probably was responsible for crowdstrike being installed in the first place. Such "approval" would have made no difference in preventing this disaster.

how 8.5M devices got approval to install? may they came with hard to disable windows autoupdate?

>how 8.5M devices got approval to install

What makes you think that it was installed via windows update? The driver was part of crowdstrike's EDR software, Falcon. It's installed by sysadmins on corporate devices. That's how it got on 8.5M devices. It's not something that gets auto-installed when you run windows update.

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

#48
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…

[deleted]

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

#49
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?

I'm curious what people think, but while obviously CrowdStrike caused the breakage, does the Operating System not have some responsibility in not allowing such outages to happen? Especially if it's an enterprise product? Ideas: 1. Microsoft themselves could potentially enforce a gradual rollout on updates (did the update go through windows updates?) 2. Have better automatic recovery options, could windows have detect…

>1. Microsoft themselves could potentially enforce a gradual rollout on updates (did the update go through windows updates?)

No. The crash was caused by a "configuration update", not through code pushed through windows update.

https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/falcon-update-for-windows-h...

>2. Have better automatic recovery options, could windows have detected the bad driver and reverted it automatically?

see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41019743

>3. just generally be more resilient, why should one bad driver take everything down?

It's kernel mode. With great power comes great responsibility. Blaming the OS is like blaming linux that you can sudo rm -rf /.

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

#50
post #43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

why do you claim i doing it blindly?

As far as I can tell you just asked it a question then posted its response as if you expected it to be fact.

If that isn't blind trust, I don't know what is.

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