this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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This is an unpopular opinion, and I get why – people crave a scapegoat. CrowdStrike undeniably pushed a faulty update demanding a low-level fix (booting into recovery). However, this incident lays bare the fragility of corporate IT, particularly for companies entrusted with vast amounts of sensitive personal information.

Robust disaster recovery plans, including automated processes to remotely reboot and remediate thousands of machines, aren't revolutionary. They're basic hygiene, especially when considering the potential consequences of a breach. Yet, this incident highlights a systemic failure across many organizations. While CrowdStrike erred, the real culprit is a culture of shortcuts and misplaced priorities within corporate IT.

Too often, companies throw millions at vendor contracts, lured by flashy promises and neglecting the due diligence necessary to ensure those solutions truly fit their needs. This is exacerbated by a corporate culture where CEOs, vice presidents, and managers are often more easily swayed by vendor kickbacks, gifts, and lavish trips than by investing in innovative ideas with measurable outcomes.

This misguided approach not only results in bloated IT budgets but also leaves companies vulnerable to precisely the kind of disruptions caused by the CrowdStrike incident. When decision-makers prioritize personal gain over the long-term health and security of their IT infrastructure, it's ultimately the customers and their data that suffer.

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[–] scytale@lemm.ee 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

For sure there is a problem, but this issue caused computers to not be able to boot in the first place, so how are you gonna remotely reboot them if you can’t connect to them in the first place? Sure there can be a way like one other comment explained, but it’s so complicated and expensive that not all of even the biggest corporations do them.

Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, CrowdStrike is pretty effective at what it does, that’s why they are big in the corporate IT world. I’ve worked with companies where the security team had a minority influence on choosing vendors, with the finance team being the major decision maker. So cheapest vendor wins, and CrowdStrike is not exactly cheap. If you ask most IT people, their experience is the opposite of bloated budgets. A lot of IT teams are understaffed and do not have the necessary tools to do their work. Teams have to beg every budget season.

The failure here is hygiene yes, but in development testing processes. Something that wasn’t thoroughly tested got pushed into production and released. And that applies to both Crowdstrike and their customers. That is not uncommon (hence the programmer memes), it just happened to be one of the most prevalent endpoint security solutions in the world that needed kernel level access to do its job. I agree with you in that IT departments should be testing software updates before they deploy, so it’s also on them to make sure they at least ran it in a staging environment first. But again, this is a tool that is time critical (anti-malware) and companies need to have the capability to deploy updates fast. So you have to weigh speed vs reliability.

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[–] Boozilla@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I've worked in various and sundry IT jobs for over 35 years. In every job, they paid a lot of lip service and performed a lot box-checking towards cybersecurity, disaster recovery, and business continuity.

But, as important as those things are, they are not profitable in the minds of a board of directors. Nor are they sexy to a sales and marketing team. They get taken for granted as "just getting done behind the scenes".

Meanwhile, everyone's real time, budget, energy, and attention is almost always focused on the next big release, or bug fixes in app code, and/or routine desktop support issues.

It's a huge problem. Unfortunately it's how the moden management "style" and late stage capitalism operates. Make a fuss over these things, and you're flagged as a problem, a human obstacle to be run over.

[–] riskable@programming.dev 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

everyone's real time, budget, energy, and attention is almost always focused on ~~the next big release, or bug fixes in app code, and/or routine desktop support issues~~ pointless meetings, unnecessary approval steps that could've been automated, and bureaucratic tasks that have nothing to do with your actual job.

FTFY.

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[–] SparrowRanjitScaur@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (3 children)

C++ is the problem. C++ is an unsafe language that should definitely not be used for kernel space code in 2024.

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

the virus definition is not written in c++. And even then, the problem was that the file was full of zeros.

[–] SparrowRanjitScaur@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Maybe I heard some bad information, but I thought the issue was caused by a null pointer exception in C/C++ code. If you have a link to a technical analysis of the issue I would be interested to read it.

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 4 months ago

They said it was a "logic error". so i think it was more likely some divide by zero or something like that

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[–] TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Issue is definitely corporate greed outsourcing issues to a mega monolith IT company.

Most IT departments are idiots now. Even 15 years ago, those were the smartest nerds in most buildings. They had to know how to do it all. Now it's just installing the corporate overlord software and the bullshit spyware. When something goes wrong, you call the vendor's support line. That's not IT, you've just outsourced all your brains to a monolith that can go at any time.

None of my servers running windows went down. None of my infrastructure. None of the infrastructure I manage as side hustles.

[–] HeyJoe@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

And you probably paid less to not have that happen as well!

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[–] frog_brawler@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago
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