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Top-level
 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. 69 comments
Favour to IT folks fixing - could you please copy the C-00000291*.sys file to somewhere and upload it to Virustotal, and reply with the Virustotal link or file hash? It's still unclear if the update was malicious or just a bug. 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. If anybody is wondering, the update was delivered via channel file updates in Crowdstrike. BBC tracker (they mix up an earlier Microsoft outage, what they're actually tracking is the Crowdstrike issue) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et 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: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et?post=asset%3A0c379e1f-48df-493c-a11a-f6b1e3d1eb63#post 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. By far my fave thing with the Crowdstrike thing is Microsoft saying to try turning impacted PCs off and on again in a loop until you get the magic reboot where CrowdStrike updates before it blue screens. The chuckle brothers at NoName attempting to claim they caused the incident. To be super clear, NoName can barely DDoS a bike shed website, and once asked me to make their logo in Minecraft. Probably the funniest BBC news update so far (they’ve cleared the airways for this incident). 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. When I get successfully DDoS’d it’s both a security incident and I’m not protected… 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. Crazy video of flights being ground stopped across the US earlier today, due to the CrowdStrike issue. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et?post=asset%3Ae7676a84-628c-4830-ba22-3b86a0d7de4c#post Photos of CrowdStrike issue https://www.theverge.com/24202037/microsoft-crowdstrike-outage-blue-screen-error-photos 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. https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/technical-details-on-todays-outage/ 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. Microsoft estimate almost 9 million Windows devices are impacted by the CrowdStrike incident (likely from crash telemetry). https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/07/20/helping-our-customers-through-the-crowdstrike-outage/ 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). https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/21/24202960/crowdstrike-windows-outage-it-workers-photos-videos Interesting - did anybody keep a list of tweets by CrowdStrike staff during the start of the incident? This one has been deleted. https://x.com/brody_n77/status/1814186136149037459 US House committee calls on CrowdStrike CEO to testify on global outage https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/22/house-committee-calls-crowdstrike-ceo-testify-global-outage/ 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. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1e9nqyn/just_exited_a_meeting_with_crowdstrike_you_can/ Delta cancelled another 20% of US flights yesterday as they struggle to recover from CrowdStrike incident https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/blogs/crowdstrike-disruption-restoration-taking-time-p-3673 CrowdStrike have published a video on YouTube about how to remediate PCs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn5eRUaMZXk (Despite the name, Self-Remediation, it is manual). Upguard have published a list of companies they say are impacted by the CrowdStrike 'Global IT Outage', based on public reporting. https://www.upguard.com/crowdstrike-outage Edit: obviously it’s missing most companies as most companies aren’t disclosing publicly. If anybody wonders what the file that took down 8.5 million Windows systems looks like.. it was 41kb in size. The only validity checking I can see CrowdStrike driver does is to check the first few bytes match the pattern seen in the screenshot before loading and executing. 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). https://www.crowdstrike.com/falcon-content-update-remediation-and-guidance-hub/ 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. On insurance and CrowdStrike, Parametrix claim amongst just the Fortune 500 companies, they are facing $5.4bn in losses, of which around 10% will be covered by insurance. CrowdStrike have won this year's Pwnie Award for Epic Fail, which will please @qwertyoruiop. If you want to know something crazy: - This year TCS migrated their EDR to CrowdStrike Questions for your EDR providers (do not assume they are experts in availability): - What are your different update processes? CrowdStrike staff members are selling CrowdStrike monopoly sets they were given on eBay. CrowdStrike filed at 8-K with the SEC on July 22nd for a cybersecurity incident. https://www.board-cybersecurity.com/incidents/tracker/20240722-crowdstrike-holdings-inc-cybersecurity-incident/ Almost a week in, CrowdStrike say 97% of devices are back online. https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/crowdstrike-97-percent-systems-online Microsoft are talking about changes to Windows after the CrowdStrike incident. Good. https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/26/24206719/microsoft-windows-changes-crowdstrike-kernel-driver |
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