- A global Microsoft Windows outage, caused by a CrowdStrike software update, has disrupted airlines, banking services, and 911 lines, leading to grounded flights and long queues.
- The issue resulted in many systems experiencing the “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD), affecting major carriers and airports worldwide, and also impacted the London Stock Exchange and Australian banking systems.
- CrowdStrike has identified and isolated the defect, deploying a fix, but recovery is expected to be slow due to the need for manual intervention on affected devices.
Yeah, a lot of people are (understandably) mad at Crowdstrike right now, but I want to drag some c-suite executives into a conference room and impress upon them the value of allocating budget for test environments and disaster recovery. Banks, airlines, service providers, these aren’t mom-and-pop bakeries and plumbers who don’t have time for all that nonsense. Every service that went down should be looking for the fuckwit in their organization, and they’re probably in the executive lounge. Anyone can make a mistake, but it takes dedication to systematically ignore the best advice of top experts in the field and run your infrastructure on a shoestring budget.
The CTO of Clownstrike presided over a similar disaster in 2010 too. AFAIK.
Man, money for a test environment is pretty low on my list of priorities right now. I’m trying to row a 20 man boat with one other person.