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Putting on my tin foil hat for a moment… I suspect the US government might have pressured them to push this update because they’ve found out that Crowdstrike’s

by tlogan 2y ago

Putting on my tin foil hat for a moment… I suspect the US government might have pressured them to push this update because they’ve found out that Crowdstrike’s system has either already been breached or has a significant zero-day security vulnerability. Now, taking off my tin foil hat…

yalogin 2y ago
Usually things like this can be explained by basic human incompetence or a misstep. Tin foils are rarely ever needed
- tlogan 2y ago
  That is even scarier. Which means that they might already got hacked due to some other incompetence or misstep. But I 100% agree. There is a good book on that topic: Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies by Charles Perrow
  - rowanG077 2y ago
    Maybe companies will rethink handing over critical security to a company where multiple highly security critical mistakes compounded each other.
  - CoastalCoder 2y ago
    I think the good news, if it's incompetence, is that they can greatly reduce the risk of recurrence by improved processes and tooling. I doubt there's much they could do about forcible government intervention.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      > I think the good news, if it's incompetence, is that they can greatly reduce the risk of recurrence by improved processes and tooling. Now let me give you the realistic news: every executive everywhere will just hand-wave this away with "it will not happen again anytime soon, or ever, right?" and be back to business as usual. The extreme cost-cutting and allowing non-technical people to rule us is what is getting us into these messes every time. And humanity in its totality seems almost completely unable to learn.
      - CoastalCoder 2y ago
        I think your cynicism may be misplaced in this particular situation. CrowdStrike's ability to make sales is (I assume) very dependent on their appearance of trustworthiness. Given the microscope they're under, and how serious some of their customers are, I think they'll need to make a convincing case that this kind of problem won't happen again. Reminds me a little of Boeing, now that I think of it.
        pdimitar 2y ago
        Did Boeing actually suffer in any measurable way? I can accept your POV of me being too cynical btw. But I think it's also important to give you one extra nuance: everybody feels awkward after "accidents" like these and everybody is very willing to accept half-arsed explanations (that usually have zero details or guarantees of future better practices) and they just want to move on and forget about it. Historically it seems that this approach wins in 99% of the cases.
        lambdaone 2y ago
        I think it would take Crowdstrike doing five, six of these in a row before they tanked. Look at Boeing; two planes full of passengers died for quite scandalous reasons, followed up by a whole bunch of other engineering scandals, and while the value of Boeing shares took a 50% hit, the company's still in business, and people are still buying planes from them.
        lamontcg 2y ago
        LastPass, Okta, Atlassian and SolarWinds show you can keep getting hacked repeatedly before you suffer any critical reputation damage in the market.
    - giantrobot 2y ago
      > I think the good news, if it's incompetence, is that they can greatly reduce the risk of recurrence by improved processes and tooling. And, if the various stories are to believed, removing or neutering the execs and managers that required an update be pushed out immediately without passing through the normal staging system.
- shawnrmclean 2y ago
  Both are assumptions. Cant follow either of you XD
- Covzire 2y ago
  It's mind boggling how an organization the size of CrowdStrike, built on endpoint agents running in kernel-mode had such an #epicfail. Was all of QA out this week or something? It's truly mind boggling so I'm really looking forward to the post-mortem, if we ever get one.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    QA was slaughtered by recent cuts.-
  - samtho 2y ago
    I am not. The size of the organization may only serve to increase the number of potentially bad pieces of code from just plain old tech debt, poorly engineered, or just a hack job implementation. The ability to control quality of code is highly dependent on how staunch the organizational culture is around keeping the repos clean of dead, kludgey, or just bad code, and strict enforcement of agreed upon architecture.
wkat4242 2y ago
Even if that were remotely likely it would make no sense. Why would they ask to put half the country to a standstill because a foreign threat actor might have control of the system and might put half the country to a standstill?
- themagician 2y ago
  It would if an attack was already underway or was planned to execute in very short order. It’s also possible that Crowdstrike wasn’t the issue, but rather the solution. If you find out the bomb is set to go off at noon on July 19 and you can’t easily patch it, you just shut the whole thing down for a day. It’s an action plot from a movie. Improbable, but not impossible. I don’t think our government is nearly that competent, but who knows.
  - cellis 2y ago
    "...All this to get one man" - Every action movie ever.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  Because it would be completely implausible for the foreign actor to want to put half the country to a stand-still. They'd likely do their very best to use this zero-day to gain even further footing in backdooring as much machines as they can.
samtho 2y ago
This is the most needlessly complex, mustache-twirling, moderately evil-villain type plot. The simpler explanation is often the answer here. Either (or both) their internal QA and release process is flawed or specific employees did not follow the process correctly. These fantastical explanations of some big government conspiracy only serve to make the believers feel better about the fact that nobody is actually in control and shit just happens randomly which is honestly a far more terrifying prospect.
muzani 2y ago
Not sure why this is so unpopular. Pressure comes from a boss or a client. The US government is likely one of those. But not the only one who can put on that kind of pressure.

by tlogan 2y ago

yalogin 2y ago

Usually things like this can be explained by basic human incompetence or a misstep. Tin foils are rarely ever needed

tlogan 2y ago
That is even scarier. Which means that they might already got hacked due to some other incompetence or misstep. But I 100% agree. There is a good book on that topic: Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies by Charles Perrow
- rowanG077 2y ago
  Maybe companies will rethink handing over critical security to a company where multiple highly security critical mistakes compounded each other.
- CoastalCoder 2y ago
  I think the good news, if it's incompetence, is that they can greatly reduce the risk of recurrence by improved processes and tooling. I doubt there's much they could do about forcible government intervention.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    > I think the good news, if it's incompetence, is that they can greatly reduce the risk of recurrence by improved processes and tooling. Now let me give you the realistic news: every executive everywhere will just hand-wave this away with "it will not happen again anytime soon, or ever, right?" and be back to business as usual. The extreme cost-cutting and allowing non-technical people to rule us is what is getting us into these messes every time. And humanity in its totality seems almost completely unable to learn.
    - CoastalCoder 2y ago
      I think your cynicism may be misplaced in this particular situation. CrowdStrike's ability to make sales is (I assume) very dependent on their appearance of trustworthiness. Given the microscope they're under, and how serious some of their customers are, I think they'll need to make a convincing case that this kind of problem won't happen again. Reminds me a little of Boeing, now that I think of it.
      - pdimitar 2y ago
        Did Boeing actually suffer in any measurable way? I can accept your POV of me being too cynical btw. But I think it's also important to give you one extra nuance: everybody feels awkward after "accidents" like these and everybody is very willing to accept half-arsed explanations (that usually have zero details or guarantees of future better practices) and they just want to move on and forget about it. Historically it seems that this approach wins in 99% of the cases.
      - lambdaone 2y ago
        I think it would take Crowdstrike doing five, six of these in a row before they tanked. Look at Boeing; two planes full of passengers died for quite scandalous reasons, followed up by a whole bunch of other engineering scandals, and while the value of Boeing shares took a 50% hit, the company's still in business, and people are still buying planes from them.
      - lamontcg 2y ago
        LastPass, Okta, Atlassian and SolarWinds show you can keep getting hacked repeatedly before you suffer any critical reputation damage in the market.
  - giantrobot 2y ago
    > I think the good news, if it's incompetence, is that they can greatly reduce the risk of recurrence by improved processes and tooling. And, if the various stories are to believed, removing or neutering the execs and managers that required an update be pushed out immediately without passing through the normal staging system.
shawnrmclean 2y ago
Both are assumptions. Cant follow either of you XD
Covzire 2y ago
It's mind boggling how an organization the size of CrowdStrike, built on endpoint agents running in kernel-mode had such an #epicfail. Was all of QA out this week or something? It's truly mind boggling so I'm really looking forward to the post-mortem, if we ever get one.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  QA was slaughtered by recent cuts.-
- samtho 2y ago
  I am not. The size of the organization may only serve to increase the number of potentially bad pieces of code from just plain old tech debt, poorly engineered, or just a hack job implementation. The ability to control quality of code is highly dependent on how staunch the organizational culture is around keeping the repos clean of dead, kludgey, or just bad code, and strict enforcement of agreed upon architecture.

wkat4242 2y ago

Even if that were remotely likely it would make no sense. Why would they ask to put half the country to a standstill because a foreign threat actor might have control of the system and might put half the country to a standstill?

themagician 2y ago
It would if an attack was already underway or was planned to execute in very short order. It’s also possible that Crowdstrike wasn’t the issue, but rather the solution. If you find out the bomb is set to go off at noon on July 19 and you can’t easily patch it, you just shut the whole thing down for a day. It’s an action plot from a movie. Improbable, but not impossible. I don’t think our government is nearly that competent, but who knows.
- cellis 2y ago
  "...All this to get one man" - Every action movie ever.
pdimitar 2y ago
Because it would be completely implausible for the foreign actor to want to put half the country to a stand-still. They'd likely do their very best to use this zero-day to gain even further footing in backdooring as much machines as they can.

samtho 2y ago

This is the most needlessly complex, mustache-twirling, moderately evil-villain type plot. The simpler explanation is often the answer here. Either (or both) their internal QA and release process is flawed or specific employees did not follow the process correctly. These fantastical explanations of some big government conspiracy only serve to make the believers feel better about the fact that nobody is actually in control and shit just happens randomly which is honestly a far more terrifying prospect.

muzani 2y ago

Not sure why this is so unpopular. Pressure comes from a boss or a client. The US government is likely one of those. But not the only one who can put on that kind of pressure.