Massive Windows/CrowdStrike Fail

[Moriarte]

Chinese were the smartest - they started building full stack of hardware and software from the get go, from the 1990's. They had no illusions about who's in control in developer-client relationship. Russians never really wanted to give up western software and they haven't had strong infrastructural defence to stop its proliferation. Some of that software is unique and desirable. So, it would have been beneficial (to the West) to both collect the rent and have a back door to Russia by leaving them within western software system. But Russians were thrown out to make a point beyond all other considerations. Now that they've become technologically independent from the western .net, like Chinese, they will stay independent. Behind in development, but outside the western umbrella of control.

I am not sure the process was preventable. The world was de-globalising into 3 blocks anyway, in several areas. So, maybe the train was following the only rail track available. The talk of tech independence is ongoing in most countries for decades. Not many have the resources to pull it off. And not many countries for whom software and hardware independence became an existential issue. Another thing with software, why it is so precious, is the accumulating effect as I call it to myself. Roughly, it is the process of exploiting monopoly position in your segment for decades to the point it becomes unattractive to look for solutions elsewhere.

Be it Nvidia's gpu+software or Microsoft's collection of drivers and software adaptations for virtually every possible scenario under the sun (slight exaggeration) - at a certain point a piece of technology becomes ingrained into economic fabric, indispensable. The situation can be used as leverage, where developer exhibits varying degrees of influence and control over the client. Or, the developer throws the client out with the water. And now we know what happens in cases where big players are on both sides of the equation.

 

[r16]

see some materialist comments on the 10$ gift thing . When you are superrich you learn it is thinking about you that matters . Gift card proves the super rich owners are thinking about you , you should be happy . Some super rich owns that company , right ?

 

[Samson]

Some has tried tried to price it, and reckon it cost the Fortune 500 $5.4 billion, of which $1.1 billion is likely to be picked up by insurance.

The bankers, the doctors and the airlines are the ones who most need to sort out their IT. That is really bad.

Spoiler Another table :

 

[Gorbles]

The bankers, the doctors and the airlines are the ones who most need to sort out their IT. That is really bad.

Unfortunately, independently of bad decisions and profiteering, are three industries that cannot afford downtime r.e. maintenance and infrastructure upgrades. So even if you had the right people making the right decisions, the cost to upgrade an existing in-use system that is critical (airlines less so, but still pretty important) is astronomical. I'm not saying it literally cannot be done, but it provides a strong argument for inertia (which strongly incentivises risk-averse behaviour).

 

[Samson]

Unfortunately, independently of bad decisions and profiteering, are three industries that cannot afford downtime r.e. maintenance and infrastructure upgrades. So even if you had the right people making the right decisions, the cost to upgrade an existing in-use system that is critical (airlines less so, but still pretty important) is astronomical. I'm not saying it literally cannot be done, but it provides a strong argument for inertia (which strongly incentivises risk-averse behaviour).

There is plenty of other transportation and manufacturing that is at least as always on as airlines. They mostly turn off at night, a lot of industries do not have that luxury.

I am not sure that applies to a new GPs medical records system either, which was the major medical thing in the UK. EMIS is 10 years old, was a clean product at that point and is not used overnight. I do not think they can claim any protection on the "cannot afford downtime" front.

 

[Gorbles]

There is plenty of other transportation and manufacturing that is at least as always on as airlines. They mostly turn off at night, a lot of industries do not have that luxury.

I am not sure that applies to a new GPs medical records system either, which was the major medical thing in the UK. EMIS is 10 years old, was a clean product at that point and is not used overnight. I do not think they can claim any protection on the "cannot afford downtime" front.

"the doctors" in general is not "specifically a GP medical record system", so I don't really think it applies to what I was saying? Of course there are systems that can be improved. But in terms of say, video games, to IT software, to banking or medical software, there's a progression of "acceptable downtime" that decreases, somewhat dramatically, as you pass through the less-critical to more-critical industries. That's all.

 

[Samson]

"the doctors" in general is not "specifically a GP medical record system", so I don't really think it applies to what I was saying? Of course there are systems that can be improved. But in terms of say, video games, to IT software, to banking or medical software, there's a progression of "acceptable downtime" that decreases, somewhat dramatically, as you pass through the less-critical to more-critical industries. That's all.

You would have thought that along that same axis there would be not going down because you gave the guy who crashed windows before full access to your kernal.

This is the banking system that still uses COBOL and also relies on Windows for day to day operations. Does that sound like an organisation that well funds its IT department, listens to what the experts say and priorities uptime and data security?

 

[Gorbles]

You would have thought that along that same axis there would be not going down because you gave the guy who crashed windows before full access to your kernal.

This is the banking system that still uses COBOL and also relies on Windows for day to day operations. Does that sound like an organisation that well funds its IT department, listens to what the experts say and priorities uptime and data security?

Yeah I'm still not sure you're understanding me. I'm saying that even with the right decisions, and the right people, the inherent nature of the industry trends risk-averse when it comes to scheduling downtime. There wasn't really a greater point than that.

Banks, for example, love uptime. Why? Because it lets people pay in. Paying in (in any amount) is "good". Taking out (in large amounts) is "bad", but both are same sides of the same operation. If keeping systems down to keep the balance static was preferable, we'd see that happen more often than we do.

 

[Samson]

Microsoft's Azure Portal takes a worldwide tumble

BREAKING Microsoft's cloud services are having a bad day as users worldwide have reported difficulty connecting to Azure.

According to the company's social media orifice for all things Microsoft365-related, "We're currently investigating access issues and degraded performance with multiple Microsoft 365 services and features."

A glance at the Azure status dashboard indicates that all things Network Infrastructure-related are having issues on a global scale. The company's last message on the matter stated, "We are investigating reports of issues connecting to Microsoft services globally. Customers may experience timeouts connecting to Azure services. We have multiple engineering teams engaged to diagnose and resolve the issue. More details will be provided as soon as possible."

In an unfortunate turn of events, no sooner had Microsoft's Azure Support mouthpiece suggested to users that they test their app's resilience with the Azure Chaos Studio, it appears the company has kicked off its own chaos testing in production.

One UK-based Register reader noted glumly that the outage "has broken most of our access to stuff."

"Can't access the portal which has stalled our development right now. I think prod is down also."

Another reader got in touch to tell us: "Initially access to the Portal wasn't possible. The attempted connection timed out. After a while, the message on the status page changed, and then I was able to connect to the portal, but only a very limited subset of my resources were visible.

"Basically, I could see Resource Groups, but none of the VMs, database servers etc. Those machines seem all to be up and working properly, but the portal isn't showing that they even exist."

It seems like a perfect excuse for a sunny afternoon in the pub — unless, of course, you actually need to get some work done while Azure staggers back to its feet.

 

[Samson]

First to fall: UK Courts and Tribunals Service

We are aware of users experiencing issues accessing multiple online services. This appears to relate to a global Microsoft Azure outage.

Spoiler TwitterX reference :

https://twitter.com/x/status/1818293470479417702

 

[The_J]

At least we're safe from Skynet.

 

[r16]

speaks the man who has not seen Katie Brewster's father the USAF General reluctantly allowing Skynet fight the global virus by dropping all the firewalls . Guess it was poor reviews .

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

At least we're safe from Skynet.

We didn't stop Judgment Day. We just delayed it.

Don't throw away your SPF 15,000,000 sunscreen.