Breaking: CrowdStrike code update bricking Windows machines around the world
UPDATED An update to a product from infosec vendor CrowdStrike is bricking computers running Windows.
The Register has found numerous accounts of Windows 10 PCs crashing, displaying the Blue Screen of Death, then being unable to reboot.
"We're seeing BSOD Org wide that are being caused by csagent.sys, and it's taking down critical services. I'll open a ticket, but this is a big deal," wrote one user.
Forums report that Crowdstrike has issued an advisory with a URL that includes the text "Tech-Alert-Windows-crashes-related-to-Falcon-Sensor-2024-07-19" – but it's behind a regwall that only customers can access.
An apparent screenshot of that article reads "CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor. Symptoms include hosts experiencing a bugcheck\blue screen error related to the Falcon Sensor."
CrowdStrike's engineers are working on the issue.
Falcon Sensor is an agent that CrowdStrike claims "blocks attacks on your systems while capturing and recording activity as it happens to detect threats fast."
Right now, however, the sensor appears to be the threat.
This is a developing story and The Register will update it as new info comes to hand. ®
Updated at 0730 UTC to add Brody Nisbet, CrowdStrike's chief threat hunter, has confirmed the issue and on X posted the following:
There is a faulty channel file, so not quite an update. There is a workaround... 1. Boot Windows into Safe Mode or WRE. 2. Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike 3. Locate and delete file matching "C-00000291*.sys" 4. Boot normally.
In a later post he wrote "That workaround won't help everyone though and I've no further actionable help to provide at the minute".
More to come as the situation evolves ...
In Australia, CrowdStrike IT outage hits airports, banks, supermarkets as emergency committee meets
A major network outage has affected several Australian institutions and businesses, including multiple airports, the Commonwealth Bank, Optus, Australia Post and Woolworths.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2
Major Global IT Outage Grounds Planes and Blocks Media Worldwide
Disruption to air traffic control systems is being reported around the world. Preliminary reports say a computer glitch may be causing the problem. Issues have arisen in the US, Spain, Germany, Australia, and elsewhere, with authorities forced to cancel takeoffs and landings due to safety concerns.
The outage was first reported about midnight CET on Thursday night/Friday.
The failure may have been caused by a software update that locks Microsoft operating systems and is reportedly not restricted to airlines. Some banks, emergency services, broadcasters, and financial institutions are also said to have been affected.
Computers using Windows 10 OS are reportedly crashing and showing "the blue screen of death" (BSOD) after an update for a security product provided by the firm CrowdStrike. The company is reportedly working on resolving the issue.
Brody Nisbet, CrowdStrike's chief threat hunter, has offered a workaround to deal with what he called a "faulty channel file" related to the Falcon Sensor cybersecurity app.
See also:
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Friday July 19 2024, @03:38PM (14 children)
One database server, two application servers.
Anyone else affected?
My applications, written in Java, could run just fine on Linux. And Microsoft SQL Server can run on Linux. But I don't make those decisions to use Windows.
I have internally demoed one of my applications running on Linux years past just to show that it actually works -- to the amazement of programmers deeply embedded in Microsoft tech up to their necks.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Friday July 19 2024, @04:17PM (3 children)
The next-door clinic's workstation is a thin client remote desktop thingy where no one has a local account credentials, the drive is bitcrypted and support were saying they're "working on it" over the phone... Since I "was around" I was asked to take a look so I rebooted to safe mode + networking so it can hopefully pull updates or something assuming they probably it set to check of updates over night / over the weekend.
I left after remote login was established telling them to restart in a couple of days and contact support if the symptoms don't clear. Felt mighty proud about that last bit :D
compiling...
(Score: 5, Informative) by Sourcery42 on Friday July 19 2024, @05:08PM (2 children)
If you can get it to a command prompt the 'fix" is fairly trivial:
cd C:\
del C:\Windows\System32\drivers\crowdstrike\C-00000291 then hit tab to let it autofill the right .sys file and delete that bugger
I've had to do it on a couple of windows machines I use for work. It only takes a few minutes as long as you don't have any bitlocker or local admin issues to trip you up. Unless they figure out how to roll out a patch remotely to all these bootlooping computers, this is going to take a hell of a toll on helpdesks dealing with users that aren't savvy enough to poke around in a shell themselves.
(Score: 5, Informative) by RamiK on Friday July 19 2024, @08:32PM (1 child)
You don't need cmd.exe if you have a local admin account. Just use Safe Mode to navigate with explorer to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\crowdstrike. After it asks for admin credentials it will open the folder and let you delete the relevant files from there.
The real hurdle is going to be getting people into Safe Mode + Networking to perform takeovers as Microsoft buried it behind multiple reboots and 3 layers deep menus. Like, I personally keep forgetting what's what and end up choosing the wrong options time and time again...
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Monday July 22 2024, @11:38AM
Cool. I can thankfully say I have no idea how to boot a windows PC into safe mode. I kicked Microsoft off any hardware I have to troubleshoot 20+ years ago.
I went for the command prompt because you only need one failed boot to get there, but it is still about four menus deep. I have fixed about half a dozen of these at this point. Good times. It is something like Advanced Repair -> Troubleshoot -> Advanced -> Command Prompt. At that point you're obligated to say, "I'm in." You know, just to make sure it works.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 19 2024, @04:22PM (6 children)
Zero personal effects so far... seems like Southwest pre-flight checkin is working normally.
Ironically, this follows my decades old contention: malware protection software causes more problems than it prevents. Maybe these days it is preventing more problems in the bigger institutions, but other than "safe browsing mode" in Chrome, I'm still not intentionally running any anti-malware packages on my personal machines.
Wouldn't it be cool if people would just run a secure OS in the first place, so constant whack-a-mole updates like this aren't necessary?
Looking forward to the day of an immutable volume for all OS and software code, and data stored in a change-logged volume so you can roll back your data anytime something you don't like happens. Something nasty gets in? Roll back your data to before it got in and restart from your immutable volume.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday July 19 2024, @06:34PM (5 children)
I would think you could set this up with Linux today. If you run from a live CD/DVD for example that can be an immutable volume. You could just run your software from a second read only drive. But the problem in TFA is people need to keep updating their OS and software which necessitates it not being read only. Unless you want to get a new drive image for every update.
As for the change-logged data volume, that's great until an obscure bug corrupts the database, or a vulnerability is discovered that lets malware ruin it.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 3, Informative) by DECbot on Friday July 19 2024, @07:39PM (1 child)
It exists. Check out SilverBlue [fedoraproject.org] or NixOS [nixos.org].
NixOS is the new hotness for immutable, declarative defined OSes or environments. Nix can either run on top of another distribution (Ubuntu, Fedora, MacOS, Windows) as a package manager or be the entire os (NixOS).
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 20 2024, @01:38AM
I don't doubt that Nix could do the immutable thing, for a limited subset of packages I might want/need... This demo:
https://tech.aufomm.com/my-nix-journey-use-nix-with-ubuntu/ [aufomm.com]
makes it look like a very powerful tool. Like an AR-15. Very easy to use it wrong, not get the intended effect.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 19 2024, @11:42PM (2 children)
But why do they keep updating their software? For security. if you're free from security concerns you only need to update when you want the latest bug fixes / feature improvements, which, frankly, I can go years between caring about.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday July 20 2024, @06:05PM (1 child)
Presumably there could still be security vulnerabilities discovered in an immutable OS, allowing an attacker to corrupt what is running in RAM or to mess with the filing system. Back in the days of an OS on ROM there were still viruses, but at least it is a bit easier to clean up after them when you can guarantee the OS itself cannot be compromised. Of course it has to be fully immutable at the hardware level to really guarantee that.
I'm generally on your side in this but I know corporate IT often seem to want to install the very latest bug fixes and shinies. And then there is the occasonal bug that acutally causes data loss itself. There would be a need to keep an eye on the security and bug reports to decide which updates to install rather than blindly auto-updating constantly.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 20 2024, @08:43PM
I am a big fan of the physical write protect switch, a momentary that you have to hold for the update to start...
There are bugs to fix, but if the bug isn't bothering you, the update would probably bother you more.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday July 19 2024, @08:00PM
I hope these things keep happening more and more frequently and worse: THAT's the ONLY way things have chance to change. If enough execs in the decision making process get fired for making stupid decisions and the more money it costs the companies, maybe they'll start listening to people who actually know what they're doing.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2024, @10:03AM
Well if they mandated CrowdStrike on Linux you might face similar problems too especially if they took away your root privs and required hardware drive encryption and TPM etc.
Because CrowdStrike does kernel panics too:
https://access.redhat.com/solutions/7068083 [redhat.com]
https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-kernel@lists.debian.org/msg136186.html [mail-archive.com]
So the main issue seems to be people using the same AV for most of their systems creating a single point of failure.
If you're doing things right on production servers, AV could actually INCREASE your risk: https://xkcd.com/463/ [xkcd.com]
FWIW the CrowdStrike CEO used to be CTO of McAfee.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 21 2024, @02:37AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday July 19 2024, @03:43PM (38 children)
The software flaw in the Cloudstrike software update was probably created by one single individual somewhere. A simple error made unintentionally caused such widespread outages on a worldwide scale.
Kind of makes you realize how brittle everything actually is.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday July 19 2024, @03:48PM (9 children)
I mean, I've never heard of crowdstrike actually saving anyone from attacks.
So, to me, this reads as an object lesson in not buying expensive corporate bloatware, because of the promises it makes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by EJ on Friday July 19 2024, @03:53PM (1 child)
Why would you hear about an attack that didn't happen?
It's only news when SHTF.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday July 19 2024, @05:11PM
I mean that would be true if I worked in a field besides IT. Crowdstrike is frequently part of the infrastructure pile(I hesitate it to call it a stack with bloatware) surrounding servers I've had to maintain. It's never given a report that was a true positive to me or anyone else doing similar work I've talked to.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Friday July 19 2024, @03:56PM (2 children)
Just saw on ArsTechnica, costs, so far, estimated at $24 billion. Probably will be dozens of billions when the blue screen dust settles.
Remember all the claims: Microsoft products have a lower total cost of ownership.
What a way to wake up to an exciting Friday morning with notifications of applications being down.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2024, @05:56PM (1 child)
We avoid Windows at all costs. And where we can't avoid running Windows, we refuse to run it on bare metal.
Out of ~5,000 servers and workstations spread across various clients we had two servers affected at one client that uses CS.
Since they aren't a 24/7 outfit, we literally stopped the Windows Server VM, rolled back to a snapshot a few hours after they closed last night and started the server. Everything was back up about 4-5 minutes later and they started their day.
Of course ~25% of our customers decide they really *really* need Outlook, so they use Microsoft 347 Office E3 Windows Outlook Enterprise or whatever the fuck Microsoft calls it now. Their mail was down for a while while the rest of my clients who use Google or a simple linux-based IMAP server had zero issues.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday July 20 2024, @09:16AM
>Microsoft 347 Office E3 Windows Outlook Enterprise
Since this latest outage they've rebranded to Microsoft 345 Office E3 Windows Outlook Enterprise
(Score: 5, Touché) by owl on Friday July 19 2024, @04:20PM (3 children)
You misunderstand the purpose of Crowdstrike.
Its purpose, and very reason for existance, is not, in any way, to protect you from the threats.
Its purpose is to protect you from the auditors, by allowing you to check the box on their compliance forms that you are running security scanning sofftware.
That is why it exists, so all the incompetent IT folks, who could not secure a master lock if they were given the key, can check a box on their compliance forms and magically become secure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2024, @08:55PM
Maybe you've missed the discussions about picking locks. Master only makes a couple different locks with any real quality, most Master locks can be picked by children, if they are determined.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KritonK on Saturday July 20 2024, @05:27AM
I check the box for our ISO 27001 certification by saying that our Windows machines are running whatever antivirus program comes with Windows. I then attach a screen shot of the Windows log, showing that the thing was recently updated automatically, and that's that. Until yesterday, I'd never even heard of CrowdStrike, let alone felt the need of installing a third party antivirus program.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2024, @08:59AM
> That is why it exists, so all the incompetent IT folks, who could not secure a master lock if they were given the key, can check a box on their compliance forms and magically become secure.
Those aren't IT folks, but actual microsoft resellers burning company payroll. I had multiple run-ins with such asshole microsofters doing whatever they could over the years to block deployments of real systems.
In one annually repeating incident, we had buy-in from the management all the way up to the top, for a "Linux lab" which the microsofters fought in every way they could big and small. Finally at the 11th hour right before the lab was to be used, they pulled the network -- again. Their assertion was that they could not allow anything on the net without protection, specifically anti-virus software. The system in question was a router / light server running OpenBSD base running SSH with keys-only plus one LAN-facing service for DHCP etc. Arguing with them got no where as they were 1) assholes, 2) microsofters, tand 3) management couldn't even spell OpenBSD or Linux and let them play their box ticking games. Though yeah 1 & 2 are redundant there.
Once I reduced the overall safety of the system by installing ClamAV from ports they were pacified for a while. Then they got the idea that a detailed inventory was required. That was solved quickly with a cron job:
( apropos -s 1 -S amd64 . ; apropos -s 8 -S amd64 . ) | sort -f -u | mail ...
After that they let up long enough to get through to exams.
No, these CrowdStrike gimmicks are just that: gimmicks. You call it out correctly, they're all about box ticking and nothing to concern goals of system + data availability, integrity, or confidentiality.
A most serious problem is that such box ticking games allow incompetent poseurs to pretend to be IT folks.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by owl on Friday July 19 2024, @04:16PM (12 children)
When millions of things depend upon one thing and that one thing has problems, of course this is the result.
The problem is the large dependency upon one.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday July 19 2024, @04:55PM (6 children)
Rather like mono-culture field crops. Most of the time it's more profitable, but when it isn't...
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Friday July 19 2024, @05:00PM
But now you're merely talking about the food supply rather than something important like computers.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2024, @05:55PM (3 children)
This "fear of the unknown change that cannot be rolled back" is the basis of my vaccine hesitancy once I understood the implications of gene editors.
I remember thalidomide well, and am also aware of how intricate life chemistry is. Now, if we did not reproduce and propagate misunderstandings of how life works...if a bad vax was upchucked like a bad meal, so be it, I probably would have went along with them. I fear a surprise like malformed babies, worse than dead babies.
I don't like messing with things I am ignorant of.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2024, @08:57PM
Worse, is messing with things that the "educated" are ignorant of.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2024, @09:19AM (1 child)
> This "fear of the unknown change that cannot be rolled back"
Balance of risks: like dying/severe organ damage from covid.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 21 2024, @04:34AM
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 20 2024, @12:46AM
> mono-culture field crops. Most of the time it's more profitable, but when it isn't...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2024, @08:45PM (4 children)
hey, I thought we were talking about windows not systemd here /s
(Score: 4, Funny) by gawdonblue on Friday July 19 2024, @10:45PM (3 children)
I'm sure this whole episode is giving Poettering another idea that he could import from Windows.
I give it 2 weeks before falcond is appearing in /sbin.
(Score: 3, Touché) by stormwyrm on Saturday July 20 2024, @01:35AM (2 children)
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2024, @09:56AM (1 child)
The difference is many Windows machines have the hardware drive encryption + TPM stuff enabled AND the users don't have admin rights. So they can't fix the problem themselves.
A stranger can't just boot off a USB drive and easily tamper with the drive. So in a way that's more "secure". But that also means in thousands of cases the thousands of affected non admins can't fix stuff either.
CrowdStrike does kernel panics too:
Last month:
https://access.redhat.com/solutions/7068083 [redhat.com]
April:
https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-kernel@lists.debian.org/msg136186.html [mail-archive.com]
So imagine if there was a kernel panic that prevent a successful boot how would you fix that on Linux if you didn't have admin/root access AND the stuff was protected by hardware drive encryption, TPM etc so you couldn't just boot from USB or attach the drive on some other machine to delete/rename the offending file(s).
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Sunday July 21 2024, @05:18AM
Yeah. My employer's Global IT department sent a mail yesterday detailing the steps one should take in order to unbrick one's devices without physically bringing the machine to an IT technician if this is not immediately feasible. After going into advanced recovery, I would have to get a Bitlocker recovery key from one of these portals that I should be able to log into using my AD credentials and enter that into the machine, get a command prompt, and delete the errant files from C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike. Nah, screw that, it's Sunday and I'm going to freaking relax. I'll have the IT techs deal with it tomorrow.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 19 2024, @04:29PM (4 children)
I'm going to guess that the individual's change was actually procedurally tested before release, and at an organization as big as CloudStrike they might even have an independent test team.
However, rarely have I ever seen test procedures which come close to covering all potential use cases. Here, they should have a farm of "representative user configurations" that the patch gets applied to to see if any of them fail. Even at a place like CloudStrike (before today) I would be willing to bet it's more like a handful of VMs running the various flavors of Windows, at best - at worst a single tester runs the procedure on his machine once and if it passes, it ships.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday July 19 2024, @05:01PM (3 children)
I wonder if Cloud Strike believes in: test what you ship and ship what you test.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 19 2024, @05:29PM (2 children)
I bet after today they believe in that more...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Friday July 19 2024, @09:32PM (1 child)
I sure hope everyone else who has this remote permissionless "upgrade" capacity sees this.
It's just a matter of time before someone uses remote backdoor access to mess up the wrong machine and result in law being passed to invalidate all those "hold harmless" clauses.
I feel that's why our computers are so finicky today...past lawmakers haven't passed law regarding responsibility for bad code. They passed it for bad car manufacture and bad food, but so far our computational infrastructure has been given a free pass, counting on soiled reputation to motivate clean coding.
We are now in a quagmire of copyright, patent law, workarounds, encryption, trade secrets, proprietary drivers, in an effort to protect a monopoly. It seems like nobody knows how the thing works anymore...everyone knows just their own little piece of it.
This whole house of cards is apt to come tumbling down given as much as a political upheaval, as state actors chime in on classified backdoors placed in the system by their operatives.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 19 2024, @11:45PM
When our devices screw up, people can potentially die.
Our customers are starting to demand anti virus software and we're going to give it to them, but even the anti virus patterns are going to be validated before being passed to our customers' machines.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday July 19 2024, @05:29PM (4 children)
That one single individual's mistake was allowed to propagate without being caught by anybody's testing mechanism, though, requires a lot more than a single person. Like many many organizations skimping on QA, or simply trusting somebody else rather than any in-house vetting.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Touché) by DannyB on Friday July 19 2024, @05:51PM (1 child)
I think it was tested, world wide!
This was probably the most customer tested piece of software in history.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 20 2024, @12:43AM
> the most customer tested piece of software in history.
Windows 11 (and it's dismal performance issues) probably outnumbers Falcon instances by a factor of 10 or more.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Saturday July 20 2024, @04:06AM
The real culprit here is auto-update. This would have been so much less impactful if admins had the ability to update or not update as it suited them.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday July 20 2024, @08:59PM
Some years ago I wrote an upgrade/install/audit mechanism for an embedded system in a big hurry. I documented it well, and automated things six ways to Sunday but I was the only one in the company who really understood it still.
Knowing that I was the single point of failure in the organisation, I never ever let myself be pressured by any PHB/Manager/CxO into putting out anything at all I hadn't personally created and tested on a real system.
We had some managers in that place that were so clueless I had to exalt them, at the top of my voice, to go forth and multiply. Seriously.
I was not going to put out broken stuff. It paid off.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Friday July 19 2024, @06:07PM (2 children)
Doubtful. One would hope they at least have a QA department to vet code before it's released, so a simple error by a programmer missed by QA. Shows it takes at least 2 people to completely fuck over the civilized world.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday July 19 2024, @07:31PM (1 child)
+1 Insightful
It might take even more than two if a manager is somehow involved. Then maybe someone above the manager also.
Or a scenario like this: manager says "just do this thing", and both developer and QA just hold their nose and do it. Takes three people.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Snotnose on Saturday July 20 2024, @02:39PM
I'm stealing that.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2024, @08:42PM
is that better or worse than the simple error being made intentionally
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday July 19 2024, @08:57PM
They just forgot to test it before sending it out. This is why testing was considered best practice ages ago.
It was probably not created by one single individual, but by an entire organization which did not implement best practices. If I had to make a bold guess, they replaced everyone who was competent and filled the positions with people who Didn't Earn It.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday July 19 2024, @03:51PM (7 children)
https://www.linuxmint.com/ [linuxmint.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Friday July 19 2024, @04:46PM (6 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Friday July 19 2024, @05:52PM (3 children)
I remember how fun games used to be when they were played in pure text on green screen monitors.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2024, @05:58PM
Tell me you're going to hate the next 4 years without telling me you're going to hate the next 4 years...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Friday July 19 2024, @09:47PM
I remember how fun they were when you actually OWNED a game, and didn't have to pay a monthly fee for a corporate server to play online.
The Ernie Ball corporation, who makes the world's best guitar strings, doesn't use Microsoft. [cnet.com]
"We won't do business with someone who treats us poorly."
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 20 2024, @12:42AM
You can still have that fun today: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/infocom%E2%80%99s-ingenious-code-porting-tools-for-zork-and-other-games-have-been-found.1497249/ [arstechnica.com]
Or, you can rub two sticks together really fast to make fire... hard to say which is more fun, depends on the mood I guess.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 19 2024, @08:35PM
I think I see what's wrong here. Games are meant to be played, not worked.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Informative) by cmdrklarg on Friday July 19 2024, @08:55PM
I got my Mint test box running Steam to install Half-Life, and it ran beautifully. I also have City of Heroes:Homecoming running via WINE, works quite nice.
I think the next major upgrade to my gaming PC will be running Linux Mint.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Friday July 19 2024, @04:04PM (7 children)
I hate the dilution of term 'bricked'.
Bricked to me means -- its beyond repair. Forever rendered useless and only usable as a 'paperweight' or 'brick'. I was ok when it included stuff that could be repaired by doing some simple hardware swap -- e.g. replacing a capacitor or pulling a chip out and reflashing it externally. But seriously... boot to safe mode and delete a file? That's not 'bricked'.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 19 2024, @04:30PM
Agreed. Here's enough bricks to build a nice office:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2024/06/02/hacker-bricks-600000-routers-in-just-72-hours/ [forbes.com]
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by owl on Friday July 19 2024, @04:30PM (4 children)
Agreed, and for the record, I was not OK with 'bricked' including "replace capacitor" or "reflash rom".
Neither of those are "bricked". Just because person X with the device does not have the tools or knowledge to perform either repair does not make the device "bricked".
Unfortunately, the dilution has happened because of all the incompetents who barely know where the power button is. From their vantage point, if pressing the power button does not get them their expected "msteams" screen, the system may as well be "bricked" (to them). So they misuse the term, diluting its meaning.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sbgen on Friday July 19 2024, @05:07PM
You may not know this but power button on some of those laptops is well hidden - presumably part of the user experience improvement. Dont putdown people until you have seen those configurations :-)
Warning: Not a computer expert, but got to use it. Yes, my kind does exist.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Deep Blue on Friday July 19 2024, @07:36PM
So what exactly are you ok with in regard to being bricked? Usually there is a way to fix a a shit ton of devices by atleast replacing parts. Which parts are beyond your treshhold to diagnose and replace? If the line is 'it can't be fixed', then there pretty much is no such thing as bricked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2024, @08:39PM (1 child)
Wait, wut? There's a power button on my computer? I've just always pulled the cord out of the receptacle when I finished computing for the day.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 21 2024, @04:35AM
Protip: don't plug it in and you never have to start.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday July 19 2024, @08:59PM
Nothing is ever beyond repair, it's just beyond someone's willingness to invest the requisite time/effort/money/philosophical interpretation of Theseus' ship.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2024, @04:05PM
I was working from home with my work-assigned laptop when suddenly the machine spontaneously crashed with a BSOD. It rebooted itself, only to experience the same csagent.sys accessing unpaged memory blue screen. It kept looping like that. A quick message to IT admin said they were experiencing the same problems on all the Windows machines in the office. It was at around lunchtime in Manila, so I decided to just call it a day and bring it to the office on Monday for someone who knows what they're doing to repair. I normally work from within a Linux virtual machine with the Windows host only running stuff like Outlook and Teams... Probably would not have had to stop work if I were running Linux on bare metal.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by srobert on Friday July 19 2024, @05:06PM
As of this moment 10:00 AM 7/19/24 PDT, Functionality of schwab.com is affected. I can see movement of indices and so forth but my account balance is unchanged from yesterday. However, I can log into their alternative trading platform at trade.thinkorswim.com, where I'm rest assured to see that the value of my portfolio is dropping like a rock. I can't say whether or not trades can be conducted on either site today, as I won't even attempt it while this is going on.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Friday July 19 2024, @06:21PM (2 children)
It's somewhat amusing, not for the effected obviously, when something like this happens. A system that very few people had ever heard of fails spectacularly and it has an effect around the world. So this Falcon software is apparently quite a lot more prevalent then I would have thought. Here it stopped everything that wanted to sell a ticket of some kind -- bus, boat, trains, planes, concerts, sporting events etc. It was free to ride the bus today cause their system couldn't sell you a ticket.
It also shows how ridiculously fragile and vulnerable the system is. Also perhaps how utterly stupid a lot of companies are that are fronting Windows systems with automatic update to the customers. Epic QA failure? It doesn't matter if it was one coder having the worst day ever, someone should have caught this before it propagated around the globe. But then I guess these things happen every now and then ... Oopsie!
Have Crowdstrike filed for bankruptcy, or protection, yet? Did their stock price get utterly wiped from the face of the exchange? Someone will want all their billions of bucks back from system crashes and lost sales etc. I suspect this will end in massive lawsuits for them from someone. Or are they just once again going to push that on the consumers (probably)?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 19 2024, @06:38PM
Both, because it's too good an opportunity to miss.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 20 2024, @12:38AM
Stock is, predictably, down to a low for the year last I heard. The breadth of the problems and the "class" of the customers makes me think this in an investment opportunity - of course there's the risk they will be found liable for the Billions in lost productivity / "repair work" - but I think that risk is pretty small. Will their customers jump ship? Some - though, ironically, they may gain some through this situation too. As I recall in the late 1990s I decided to go with E*Trade as an online brokerage specifically because they had been hacked and handled it pretty well. Sure, this is a screwup, but there's an old IBM or Boeing or some other massive company story about an employee who made some 100 million dollar mistake, walks into his boss' office and says "so I guess I'm fired?" Boss asks: "you ever going to make that mistake again?" "Well, of course not." "So, I just paid $100 million to educate you - why would I fire you now?"
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Deep Blue on Friday July 19 2024, @07:28PM
They striked the shit out of the crowd!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Friday July 19 2024, @08:16PM (1 child)
"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" / "Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?"
"Nope, there you go. That's the sound it makes when your shit is bricked. That song. I'm sorry, but are you from the stupid?"
Good thing Moss works with Linux 'cos Roy "only does Windows"...poor sap.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2024, @10:06AM
Have you tried turning it off and on again 15 times? 🤣
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/07/crowdstrike-fixes-start-at-reboot-up-to-15-times-and-get-more-complex-from-there/ [arstechnica.com]
(Score: 2) by SomeRandomGeek on Friday July 19 2024, @09:37PM (1 child)
https://xkcd.com/2961 [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday July 20 2024, @02:10AM
There is also this [xkcd.com]
One job constant is that good employers have low turnover, so opportunities to join good employers are relatively rare.
(Score: 4, Funny) by mcgrew on Friday July 19 2024, @09:38PM (10 children)
"I didn't do it! Honest!"
Almost the entire commercial internet went down yesterday, and our IT guy Roger is worried. "Not again! I hate jail!"
We couldn't calm him down. But ClownStrike, some geek company nobody but Roger ever heard of, said it was Microsoft's incompetence that caused it.
Governments, police dispatchers, and airlines were all shut down, thanks to Microsoft's overpaid, incompetent staff who pushed out a secirity patch that made many Windows computers so secure their owners couldn't access them. It also disabled the sound recording app Audacity.
No one running BSD, Apple, Unix, Linux, or any other operating system had a problem, unless of course they wanted to ride an airliner or call 911.
07/19/2024
More seriously, my daughter texted me about it, they were affected where she works. Audacity is still fine on Linux.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Tork on Saturday July 20 2024, @01:48AM (4 children)
Just a reminder that for a lot of people running BSD, Apple, Unix, Linux, or any other operating system means not running at all or at least at a profitable pace. Don't forget that lots of software requires 3d acceleration and traditionally the gaming OSes get the best drivers. This lack of insight into reality is why Slashdot-esque evangelization has failed to move significant numbers of people towards *nix. Our problems aren't automatically solved just because you can get a browser window open, and multi-platform software invariably works best on its most used platform.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Troll) by Tork on Saturday July 20 2024, @03:22AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2024, @09:21AM
GOG with Wine works for me.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PiMuNu on Saturday July 20 2024, @09:29AM
Agreed.
I always buy my games off Steam (even on my windows box) precisely because they support games on linux:
https://www.protondb.com/ [protondb.com]
This is probably the way forwards...
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday July 20 2024, @10:24AM
Don't forget that lots of software requires 3d acceleration and traditionally the gaming OSes get the best drivers.
Games might have been the force behind graphics driver support for the last decade or so. However, even Nvidia is acknowledging that the real work takes place on Linux, especially when it comes to parallel processing using GPUs. The result is that NVIDIA is working on fully open source GPU kernel modules [nvidia.com]. It may take a couple of years to see the results, but the switch to FOSS graphics drivers has been made.
The real barrier to desktop Linux adoption is on the store shelves. For all practical purposes, no one installs an OS, not even on legacy systems. They buy what's on the shelf at the big box store, take it home, and use it as-is. When they run into trouble or the OS ages out, they just buy new hardware. Until we can break M$ monopoly on the OEMs, having Linux in the store is not going to happen. Until we have Linux on the store shelves, it's just not going to break into the desktop market no mater how much it dominates in mobile, servers, super computers, and embedded devices.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2024, @10:22AM (4 children)
Some of those running Linux and CrowdStrike had problems last month and earlier.
So it ain't a Windows only thing.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Saturday July 20 2024, @03:10PM (3 children)
Thank you for the tip; I wasn't aware of this and I've found story about it that I will submit for consideration here. :)
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday July 20 2024, @03:57PM (2 children)
No one and no institution with its act together enough to run Linux is going to be gullible enough to have paid for the CrowdStrike boondoggle. Conversely none of those gullible enough to burn money on a pointless CrowdStrike boondoggle are going to have escape the marketeers of Redmond. It's a mutually exclusive situation and only a theoretical possibility that a machine somewhere could have been affected. Not all sides are equal and posting such an article might be amusing for some but mainly will play the role of promoting false balance [berkeley.edu] and thus exacerbating anti-FOSS and anti-Linux fear, uncertainty, and doubt on behalf of m$ and its hordes of frauds, poseurs, and charlatans. For that reason I would suggest to please drop it from the queue.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hubie on Saturday July 20 2024, @06:05PM (1 child)
What I found interesting about that story was, first my surprise that they have a linux "product," but more importantly that those events showed very explicitly how CrowdStrike pushes out untested code. It directly undermines any narrative they or Microsoft might try to push about how Friday's event was an unfortunate isolated mistake and how "we must, and we will, do better" (or whatever meaningless Zuckerburgian "we take full responsibility, but not real responsibility" statement that is inevitably coming).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23 2024, @12:14AM
More "We will do better":
https://www.businessinsider.com/crowdstrike-ceo-george-kurtz-tech-outage-microsoft-mcafee-2024-7 [businessinsider.com]
🤣
(Score: 2) by Username on Saturday July 20 2024, @03:08PM
Once upon a time, in a job long ago, I was given a usb drive to back up programs. For itar etc reasons this usb drive had to be encrypted, and if it fails 10 attempts it bricks itself. Now every one of these usb drives had to be added to crowdstrikes white list after every update. Otherwise they wouldn't work. But what always did work? Plugging your phone in and using the windows phone transfer app.
Security theatrics
(Score: 2) by jb on Monday July 22 2024, @03:40AM
Anything that prevents hapless users from running dangerous spyware like Windows (10 or any other version) has to be a good thing.