Re: Global Compu-Trouble

On 2024-07-19 15:30:08 +0000, mm0fmf said:

On 19/07/2024 15:10, candycanearter07 wrote:

Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote at 13:40 this Friday (GMT):

In comp.misc Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

I thought this world-wide trouble might be due to some widely-used
cloud service, but it appears the common factor may be something else,
namely their dependence on a security service called ?CrowdStrike?.

 Yes, though it has in turn taken many VMs in Microsoft's Azure
cloud service offline, and amusingly Microsoft's official advice to
affected users is to turn their VMs off and on again, repeatedly:
 https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/19/azure_vms_ruined_by_crowdstrike/

  So what was actually affected?

 Crowdstrike is an endpoint monitoring system that is meant to detect bad stuff on your computers and stop intrusions and shit. We have it on Windows laptops and Windows servers. Never seems to do anything apart from once when it decided the software my employer pays me to write was a threat when I was testing it ;-)
 There was an update today that like many security updates, can get rolled out automatically. My employers don't do this... they do do some testing of all updates.  The update caused Windows (maybe just Win10) machines to BSOD when booting.
 There is a manual fix, do a safe boot (doesn't load lots of extra drivers and utilities), go and find the erroneous file in one of Windows' folders and delete it. Reboot, job done. Repeat on all affected machines.
 My place has about 17000 Windows laptops and servers (and almost as much Linux stuff) so I think IT will be quite pleased they didn't push the update out automatically.

An issue caused by a combination of two or three IT stupidities:
  1.  Using and relying on silly "cloud" services for everything.
  2.  Using and relying on Microsloth Windoze.
      (Linux and MacOS computers were not affected)
  3.  Having your computer system / software set to automatically
      install updates.
The only way to fix it is to manually boot into Safe Mode and delete / rename the updated file from computers. A long and labourious process for many IT departments and a lot of money for businesses. (No doubt Crowdstrike is going to be facing a lot of lawsuits, especially in America, land of the "sue 'em all" mentality and little taking responsibility for your own decisions!)