If anybody is wondering the impact of the Crowdstrike thing - it’s really bad. Machines don’t boot.

The recovery is boot in safe mode, log in as local admin and delete things - which isn’t automateable. Basically Crowdstrike will be in very hot water.

You know it was coming...

Crowdstrike's BSOP theme tune

I've obtained copies of the .sys driver files Crowdstrike customers have. They're garbage. Each customer appears to have a different one.

They trigger an issue that causes Windows to blue screen.

I am unsure how these got pushed to customers. I think Crowdstrike might have a problem.

For any orgs in recovery mode, I'd suspend auto updates of CS for now.

The .sys files causing the issue are channel update files, they cause the top level CS driver to crash as they're invalidly formatted. It's unclear how/why Crowdstrike delivered the files and I'd pause all Crowdstrikes updates temporarily until they can explain.

This is going to turn out to be the biggest 'cyber' incident ever in terms of impact, just a spoiler, as recovery is so difficult.

I'm seeing people posting scripts for automated recovery.. Scripts don't work if the machine won't boot (it causes instant BSOD) -- you still need to manually boot the system in safe mode, get through BitLocker recovery (needs per system key), then execute anything.

Crowdstrike are huge, at a global scale that's going to take.. some time.

Crowdstrike statement: bbc.co.uk/news/live/cnk4jdwp49…

Basically 'it's not a security incident... we just bricked a million systems'

For anybody wondering why Microsoft keep ending up in the frame, they had an Azure outage and- this may be news to some people- a lot of Microsoft support staff are actually external vendors, eg TCS, Mindtree, Accenture etc.

Some of those vendors use Crowdstrike, and so those support staff have no systems.

But MS isn’t the outage cause today.

BBC News at 6 is leading the entire show with this. (They asked me to appear but I was slightly busy).

For the record I spent much of the day trying to tell people it isn’t a Microsoft issue.

Billboards in Times Square blue screen of deathing. Nice way to find out which orgs use Crowdstrike, this 🤣

Source is BBC News, if anybody wondering.

CrowdStrike have effectively a mini root cause analysis out

Pretty much as everybody knows, they did a channel update and it caused the driver to crash.

If they blame the person who did the update.. they shouldn’t, as it sounds like an engine defect.

crowdstrike.com/blog/technical…

Technical Details: Falcon Update for Windows Hosts | CrowdStrike

Learn more about the technical details around the Falcon update for Windows hosts.

^CrowdStrike

For the people thinking ‘shouldn’t testing catch this?’, the answer is yes. Clearly something went wrong.

This isn’t CrowdStrike’s first rodeo on this, although it is the most severe incident so far.

Eg just last month they had an issue where a content update pushed CPU to 100% on one core: thestack.technology/crowdstrik…

Truthfully these issues happen across all vendors - I’ve had my orgs totalled twice now by AV vendors, one while I was on holiday abroad and had to suspend said holiday.

CrowdStrike bug maxes out 100% of CPU, requires Windows reboots

"Note: This is 100% of a single core. In an 8-core system for example, an additional 12.5% of unexpected total CPU load would be experienced..."

^{The Stack}

Btw, that isn’t to excuse it or any vendor. CrowdStrike have gotta be better at this stuff. And they’ll have to, as if they aren’t transparent customers will flee.

It’s a warning shot to all AV/EDR/XDR vendors that if you fuck up availability, your brand will become failure. It’s harsh but that’s the media cycle and modern world.

The Verge has a quick look at the orgs trying to recover from the Crowdstrike incident.

If you’re wondering why it’s dropped off the radar of most press, they think it’s over as Down Detector looks okay (which, to be clear, is not good logic).

theverge.com/2024/7/21/2420296…

CrowdStrike outage: Photos, videos, and tales of IT workers fixing BSODs

Images, video, and stories illustrate how the CrowdStrike outage is affecting IT workers as they push to get their organizations’ systems back online.

^{Wes Davis (The Verge)}

Crowdstrike are touting auto remediation of blue screen as an opt in feature.

However, I just tried it - it’s not very successful, most boots still blue screen of death. I think CS need to be careful on messaging about this as it sounds like they’re offering it as a silver bullet. It only works if networking kicks in and the agent updates before Windows finishes booting.

reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments…

CrowdStrike have published a video on YouTube about how to remediate PCs: youtube.com/watch?v=Bn5eRUaMZX…

(Despite the name, Self-Remediation, it is manual).

CrowdStrike Host Self-Remediation for Remote Users with Local Administrator Privileges

This video for remote users with local administrator privileges, outlines the steps required to self-remediate a Windows laptop experiencing a blue screen of...

^YouTube

Upguard have published a list of companies they say are impacted by the CrowdStrike 'Global IT Outage', based on public reporting.

upguard.com/crowdstrike-outage

Edit: obviously it’s missing most companies as most companies aren’t disclosing publicly.

Companies impacted by CrowdStrike outage

To help organizations navigate the CrowdStrike Falcon incident we’ve compiled this list of companies reported to have been impacted by the outage.

^{www.upguard.com}

The US Department of Transport has opened an investigation into Delta over the disruption related to CrowdStrike incident.

Good luck to the CrowdStrike account manager for Delta.

The initial Post Incident Review is out from CrowdStrike. It’s good and really honest.

There’s some wordsmithing (eg channel updates aren’t code - their parameters control code).

The key take away - channel updates are currently deployed globally, instantly. They plan to change this at a later date to operate in waves. This is smart (and what Microsoft do for similar EPP updates).

crowdstrike.com/falcon-content…

By ‘this is smart’ I mean ‘this is smart… now’. Obviously they shouldn’t have been globally, simultaneously deploying kernel driver parameter changes across all customers: it was waiting to go wrong.

They still are btw, as it will take a while to engineer the correct way of doing it.