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We finally know what caused the global tech outage - and how much it cost (www.cnn.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (10 children)

On Wednesday, CrowdStrike released a report outlining the initial results of its investigation into the incident, which involved a file that helps CrowdStrike’s security platform look for signs of malicious hacking on customer devices.

The company routinely tests its software updates before pushing them out to customers, CrowdStrike said in the report. But on July 19, a bug in CrowdStrike’s cloud-based testing system — specifically, the part that runs validation checks on new updates prior to release — ended up allowing the software to be pushed out “despite containing problematic content data.”

...

When Windows devices using CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity tools tried to access the flawed file, it caused an “out-of-bounds memory read” that “could not be gracefully handled, resulting in a Windows operating system crash,” CrowdStrike said.

Couldn't it, though? 🤔

And CrowdStrike said it also plans to move to a staggered approach to releasing content updates so that not everyone receives the same update at once, and to give customers more fine-grained control over when the updates are installed.

I thought they were already supposed to be doing this?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

a bug in CrowdStrike’s cloud-based testing system

Always blame the tests. There are so many dark patterns in this industry including blaming qa for being the last group to touch a release, that I never believe “it’s the tests”.

There’s usually something more systemic going on where something like this is missed by project management and developers, or maybe they have a blind spot that it will never happen, or maybe there’s a lack of communication or planning, or maybe they outsourced testing to the cheapest offshore providers, or maybe everyone has huge time pressure, but “it’s the tests”

Ok, maybe I’m not impartial, but when I’m doing a root cause on how something like this got out, my employer expects a better answer than “it’s the tests”

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

There was probably one dude at CrowdStrike going. Uh hey guys??? 😆

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