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CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

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Re: CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

#761
post #708

is there an ELI5 on how can this happen? Like i get its a boot loop, but what did crowdstrike do that cause it? How can non malicious code trigger boot loop?

I would not call Crowdstrike ”non-malicious”. It’s incredibly incompetently implemented kit that’s sold to organizations as snakeoil that ”protects them from cybercrime”. It’s purpose is to give incompetent IT managers to ”implement something plausible” against cyberincidents, and when an incident happens, it gives them the excuse that ”they followed best practices”.

It craps the users PC while at it too.

I hope the company burns to the ground and large organizations realize it’s not a really great idea to run a rootkit at every PC ”just because everyone else does it”.

Re: CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

#762

Yet their stock tanked only a couple of dollars. They (and their customers) should face some rather unpleasant lawsuits. If you let others own your systems, you should not be allowed to provide critical infrastructure.

They didn’t force anyone to use their software in critical infrastructure. The customers deploying the software as part of critical infrastructure should take the necessary precautions or insist on a contractual agreement that makes the vendor liable for any causally related failures of the critical infrastructure. The mistake is that so much software is being put into use without any substantial liability. Doing so would also make software much, much more expensive.

Re: CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

#764
what many people of not taking is that why we are here:

one simple reason: all eggs in one Microsoft PC basket

why in one Microsoft PC basket?

- most corporate desktop apps are developed for Windows ONLY

Why most corporate desktop apps are developed for Windows ONLY?

- it is cheaper to develop and distribute since, 90% of corporations use Windows PCs ( Chicken and Egg problem)

- alternate Mac Laptops are 3x more expensive, so corporations can't afford

- there are no robust industrial grade Linux laptops from PC vendors (lack of support, fear of Microsoft may penalize for promoting Linux laptops etc.)

1/ Most large corporations (Airlines, Hospitals etc..) can AFFORD & DEMAND their Software vendors to provide their ' business desktop applications' both in Windows and Linux versions and install mix of both Operating systems.

2/ majority of corporate desktop applications can be Web applications (Browser based) removing the single vendor Microsoft Windows PC/Laptops

-

Re: CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

#768

This might be a good time for folks to go back and watch the first episode of James Burke's Connections: The Trigger Effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcOb3Dilzjc Interconnected systems can fail spectacularly in unforeseen ways. Strange that something so obvious is so often dismissed or overlooked.

If you realize something horrific, your options are to decide it's not your problem (and feel guilty when it blows up), carefully forget you learned it, or try to do something to get it changed.

Since the last of these involves overcoming everyone else's shared distress in admitting the emperor has no clothes, and the first of these involves a lot of distress for you personally, a lot of people opt for option B.

Re: CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops

#770

Wow, this hits close to home. Doing a page fault where you can't in the kernel is exactly what I did with my very first patch I submitted after I joined the Microsoft BitLocker team in 2009. I added a check on the driver initialization path and didn't annotate the code as non-paged because frankly I didn't know at the time that the Windows kernel was paged. All my kernel development experience up to that point was wi…

What does this mean?

Windows kernel paged, linux non paged?

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