…according to a Twitter post by the Chief Informational Security Officer of Grand Canyon Education.
So, does anyone else find it odd that the file that caused everything CrowdStrike to freak out, C-00000291-
00000000-00000032.sys was 42KB of blank/null values, while the replacement file C-00000291-00000000-
00000.033.sys was 35KB and looked like a normal, if not obfuscated sys/.conf file?
Also, apparently CrowdStrike had at least 5 hours to work on the problem between the time it was discovered and the time it was fixed.
Every affected company should be extremely thankful that this was an accidental bug, because if crowdstrike gets hacked, it means the bad actors could basically ransom I don’t know how many millions of computers overnight
Not to mention that crowdstrike will now be a massive target from hackers trying to do exactly this
On Monday I will once again be raising the point of not automatically updating software. Just because it’s being updated does not mean it’s better and does not mean we should be running it on production servers.
Of course they won’t listen to me but at least it’s been brought up.
I thought it was a security definition download; as in, there’s nothing short of not connecting to the Internet that you can do about it.
Well I haven’t looked into it for this piece of software but essentially you can prevent automatic updates from applying to the network. Usually because the network is behind a firewall that you can use to block the update until you decide that you like it.
Also a lot of companies recognize that businesses like to check updates and so have more streamlined ways of doing it. For instance Apple have a whole dedicated update system for iOS devices that only businesses have access to where you can decide you don’t want the latest iOS and it’s easy you just don’t enable it and it doesn’t happen.
Regardless of the method, what should happen is you should download the update to a few testing computers (preferably also physically isolated from the main network) and run some basic checks to see if it works. In this case the testing computers would have blue screened instantly, and you would have known that this is not an update that you want on your system. Although usually requires a little bit more investigation to determine problems.
Removed by mod
I hear you, but there’s no reason to be angry.
When I first learned of the issue, my first thought was, “Hey our update policy doesn’t pull the latest sensor to production servers.” After a little more research I came to the same conclusion you did, aside from disconnecting from the internet there’s nothing we really could have done.
There will always be armchair quarterbacks, use this as an opportunity to teach, life’s too short to be upset about such things.
This is why I openly advocate for a diverse ecosystems of services, so not everyone is affected if the biggest gets targeted.
But unfortunately, capitalism favors only the frontrunner and everyone else can go spin, and we aren’t getting rid of capitalism anytime soon.
So basically, it is inevitable that crowdstrike WILL be hacked, and the next time will be much much worse.
Properly regulated capitalism breaks up monopolies so new players can enter the market. What you’re seeing is dysfunctional capitalism - an economy of monopolies.
Sorry no, capitalism is working exactly as intended. Concentration of wealth breaks regulation with unlimited political donations.
You call it unregulated, but that is the natural trend for when the only acceptable goal is the greater accumulation of wealth. There comes a time when that wealth is financially best spent buying politicians.
Until there are inherent mechanisms within capitalism to prevent special interest money from pushing policy and direct regulatory capture, capitalism will ALWAYS trend to deregulation.
You call it unregulated, but that is the natural trend for when the only acceptable goal is the greater accumulation of wealth.
Yes…obviously.
And that IS dysfunctional capitalism.
Until there are inherent mechanisms within capitalism to prevent special interest money from pushing policy and direct regulatory capture
That’s exactly what I’m saying, dude.
This is NOT capitalism working as intended. This is broken capitalism. Runaway capitalism. Corrupt capitalism.
Its like saying we just need good kings, no ids a bad system. Any capitalist system will devolve in corruption and monopoly. No regulations can survive the unavailable regulatory capture and corruption.
No system is perfect. All systems require some form of keeping power from accruing to the few.
Yes, very insightful.
The fact that a single bad file can cause a kernel panic like this tells you everything you need to know about using this kind of integrated security product. Crowdstrike is apparently a rootkit, and windows apparently has zero execution integrity.
I’m not a dev, but don’t they have like a/b updates or at least test their updates in a sandbox before releasing them?
one would think. apparently the world is their sandbox.
It could have been the release process itself that was bugged. The actual update that was supposed to go out was tested and worked, then the upload was corrupted/failed. They need to add tests on the actual released version instead of a local copy.
Could also be that the Windows versions they tested on weren’t as problematic as the updated drivers around the time they released.
How can all of those zeroes cause a major OS crash?
If I send you on stage at the Olympic Games opening ceremony with a sealed envelope
And I say “This contains your script, just open it and read it”
And then when you open it, the script is blank
You’re gonna freak out
Ah, makes sense. I guess a driver would completely freak out if that file gave no instructions and was just like “…”
You would think that Microsoft would implement some basic error handing.
That’s what the BSOD is. It tries to bring the system back to a nice safe freshly-booted state where e.g. the fans are running and the GPU is not happily drawing several kilowatts and trying to catch fire.
No try-catch, no early exit condition checking and return, just nuke the system and start over?
Windows assumes that you installed that AV for a reason. If it suddenly faults, who’s to say it’s a bug and not some virus going ham on the AV? A BSOD is the most graceful exit you could do, ignoring and booting a potentially compromised system is a fairly big no-no (especially in systems that feel the need to install AV like this in the first place).
