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CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

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Re: CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

#701

This event is predicted in Sydney Dekker’s book “Drift into Failure”, which basically postulates that in order to prevent local failure we setup failure prevention systems that increase the complexity beyond our ability to handle, and introduce systemic failures that are global. It’s a sobering book to read if you ever thought we could make systems fault tolerant.

We need more local expertise is really the only answer. Any organization that just outsources everything is prone to this. Not that organizations that don't outsource aren't prone to other things, but at least their failures will be asynchronous.

Re: CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

#702
post #646

I'm confused as to how this issue is so widespread in the first place. I'm unfamiliar with how Crowdstrike works, do organizations really have no control over when these updates occur? Why can't these airlines just apply the updates in dev first? Is it the organizations fault or does Crowdstrike just deliver updates like this and there's no control? If that's just how they do it, how do they get away with this?

CrowdStrike is an endpoint detection and response (EDR) system. It is deeply integrated into the operating system. This type of security software is very common on company-owned computers, and often have essentially root privileges.

Re: CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

#703

Took down our entire emergency department as we were treating a heart attack. 911 down for our state too. Nowhere for people to be diverted to because the other nearby hospitals are down. Hard to imagine how many millions of not billions of dollars this one bad update caused.

Wife is a nurse. They eventually go 2 computers working for her unit. I don't think it impacted patients already being treated, but they couldn't get surgeries scheduled and no charting was being done. Some of the other floors were in complete shambles.

Re: CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

#705

This event is predicted in Sydney Dekker’s book “Drift into Failure”, which basically postulates that in order to prevent local failure we setup failure prevention systems that increase the complexity beyond our ability to handle, and introduce systemic failures that are global. It’s a sobering book to read if you ever thought we could make systems fault tolerant.

Many systems are fault tolerant, and many systems can be made fault tolerant. But once you drift into a level of complexity spawned by many levels of dependencies, it definitely becomes more difficult for system A to understand the threats from system B and so on.
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