A widespread Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) issue on Windows PCs disrupted operations across various sectors, notably impacting airlines, banks, and healthcare providers. The issue was caused by a problematic channel file delivered via an update from the popular cybersecurity service provider, CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike confirmed that this crash did not impact Mac or Linux PCs.
It turns out that similar problems have been occurring for months without much awareness, despite the fact that many may view this as an isolated incident. Users of Debian and Rocky Linux also experienced significant disruptions as a result of CrowdStrike updates, raising serious concerns about the company’s software update and testing procedures. These occurrences highlight potential risks for customers who rely on their products daily.
The software is not the problem. Software breaks all the time. The problem is monocultures and centralization. Building entire industry ecosystems all around a single point of failure. This is the just-in-time manufacturing supply chain disruptions and fragility all over again.
Who knew, a diverse ecosystem was a strength, not a weakness.
also doesn’t help when CEO of said company isn’t a fan of testing or code reviews and IS a fan of crunch and speedy development. One of the reasons that whole mcafee snafu also happened. He believed development at Mcafee was too slow.
The software is the problem if it’s produced with a corporate mentality of “ship first, fix later”.
Yep, at this point the “security” companies can do with imitating malware development practices.
Everyone got an MBA and failed to realize it was just corporate brainwashing.
Nature has been telling us all long, but we don’t listen!
The analysis revealed that the Debian Linux configuration was not included in their test matrix.
You might as well say you don’t support Linux.
“Crowdstrike’s model seems to be ‘we push software to your machines any time we want, whether or not it’s urgent, without testing it’,” lamented the team member.
I wonder how this shit works on NixOS.
If I’m remembering right, RHEL is Crowdstrike’s primary Linux target. And NixOS wouldn’t even be a factor since it’s basically just not enterprise grade.
That said, they need a serious revision of their QA processes.
RHEL, Ubuntu, & Debian cover the vast majority of enterprise installs I imagine, and provide a solid testing base for developers in the Linux business software space.
Maybe you add Gentoo, some post-CentOS clones/forks, or other more niche industry/workload specific distros, but how you do skip Debian?
RHEL, Ubuntu, & Debian cover the vast majority of enterprise installs I imagine, and provide a solid testing base for developers in the Linux business software space.
Enterprises I imagine are using RHEL, Ubuntu, SUSE’s SLES and Oracle Linux and probably not Debian. But that’s a guess. Where can statistics and numbers be found ?
Largish enterprise heavily using Debian, just 1 data point here but we do exist.
Nice.
consultant for large enterprises in australia, and i literally can’t say i’ve ever seen anyone running anything other than RHEL and amazon linux (so… RHEL) in production… unless we’re talking not for profits, and then that’s been a bit of a mixed bag
I’m not an expert in any sense.
But it was always my impression that Ubuntu and Debian were what you use on personal machines, while RHEL is the baseline standard for professional servers.
Is that not accurate? CrowdStrike’s target customer seems to be the sort of company that would insist on using RHEL for the enterprise features.
That is not accurate.
- RedHat is the standard for high-budget American corps.
- Rocky and similar for low-budget American orgs
- Ubuntu Server has a large following with developers who think they don’t need sysadmins.
- Debian Stable is more popular with European orgs that aren’t incentivized by US government contracts to go with Redhat. It is much more stable than Ubuntu, has been more reliable in its support promises than Redhat, and doesn’t suffer from the NIH syndrome that infects both.
- Ubuntu is popular with home users
- Debian Testing is good for workstations and personal machines that need to be a bit more current
- Debian Unstable for people who like Debian but want to live on the bleeding edge
The enterprise systems I see are only certified on RHEL and SUSE, debian is not even a contender. Obviously Americans typically choose Rhel and europe goes for SUSE.
Debian doesn sell enterprise support.
I’ve been using Linux professionally for 15 years. It’s been Debian or Ubuntu almost everywhere I have been. Although that might be regional.
Which region, if you don’t mind me asking?
South of Sweden
What’s it like living there? I apologize for the off-topic question but I’m fascinated by the Nordic States in comparison to my experience growing up and adulting in the US. I’m envious of your higher quality of life index being so high in those countries.
I don’t know where I’m going with this… just wanted to start a drunken conversation.
After doing a quick search I found we’re not too far behind you (two rankings lower) but I still like to hear from actual people how they view their govt., and how they’re helping (if at all).
This is accurate.
There is another reply that says “this is not accurate” that includes true information to back you up.
For infrastructure, RHEL is the gold standard for large companies with a budget. The RHEL customer-base probably overlaps almost completely with CrowdStrike.
RHEL imitators are popular with people that value cost savings more than the corporate backing ( beyond individual cases, this DOES NOT describe the enterprise space ).
Ubuntu is very popular with developers in companies of all sizes. Outside of maybe being the base for containers, this is not how “infrastructure” choices are made though.
Debian is popular with Linux enthusiasts and, where they have influence, businesses may use that. In enterprise environments, it is less likely this group is the one making the decisions. Again though, individual cases exist.
In the enterprise realm it is typically SUSE and RHEL.
The article implies that CrowdStrike issue impacted only Debian and Rocky 9.4. Debian I can see. But how did something impact Rocky but not RHEL itself or Alma or Oracle?
Is Rocky actually different from RHEL now? Their entire brand promise is that they are the same.
Nobody breaks Rocky ok (spoken in a gruff, low, mumbling voice)
Users of Debian and Rocky Linux also experienced significant disruptions as a result of CrowdStrike updates, raising serious concerns about the company’s software update and testing procedures. These occurrences highlight potential risks for customers who rely on their products daily.
Hot take: maybe bossware is a fucking drain on society, and people should stop buying it.
Yeah, but our leadership had a really nice lunch with their sales rep! Licenses for everyone!
It’s sad how accurate this is.
After getting a referral from your cyber insurance rep right?
Well, if the executive leech class wants workers to have bossware, there’s not all that much people can do about it. Can’t just decide to not use it if your employer demands it
I didn’t mean the average worker. I meant the “executive leech class,” because downtime of this scale means lost profits, which is something they care deeply about.
which is something they care deeply about.
They care about quarterly profits. Preventing fuckups of this scale requires long-term effort which is not profitable by itself, it only prevents possible future fuckups, and this is why proper QC etc. aren’t done. Short term profits over everything else.
In that case, it’s time for the average workers to sabotage the bossware. Let the leech class solve the problem they create.
Hospitals are effected by this too.
Why are sensitive or critical hospital systems loaded with bossware? That itself is a breach of medical safety regulations and medical privacy. If such bossware fails for whatever reason - even sabotage, it’s on the leach class. Prosecute them for murder.
So?
“I don’t test often but when I do I test on the entire planet”
rootkit doing rootkit things
There’s a concept in this industry where you eat your own dog food.
Deploying these updates to your own people could have avoided this mess.
Oh but they did. Turns out that this is specifically caused by one driver expecting another to be installed, the other one being for another of their products. If you have the other product installed, it doesn’t crash, so it didn’t crash on their machines because they have all their products installed and apparently not a single element of their test matrix has the single most common configuration they service
It also broke windows the other day…
😂
Believe me, people noticed that one.
