It was a true technological armageddon. The global blackout that took place at the end of last week is already being described by many experts as the largest incident of its kind in history.
“This is exactly what we feared years ago. The difference is that this time the worst-case scenario has come true.”
Recall: Last Friday, millions of Windows computers crashed globally. The devices displayed the so-called Blue Screen of Death (BSD). ), which paralyzed the operations of thousands of companies and institutions.
The blackout has spared no industry. Airports have had to cancel flights, many factories have halted production, banks have been unable to process transfers, hospitals have postponed planned procedures and surgeries (except life-saving ones), and some TV stations have had to stop broadcasting.
Initially, it seemed that Microsoft, the creator of the Windows operating system, was to blame for the global blackout. However, it quickly turned out that CrowdStrike, a provider of antivirus software, was responsible for the incident. On Friday at 8:56 a.m. Polish time, the company released an update to the Falcon driver software for Windows computers and servers.
The update put millions of computers into a boot loop. Devices would constantly reboot, treating users to a blue screen of death. Although the bug was fixed later that day, it took just a few hours for almost the entire world to go up in flames – fortunately only symbolically.
I want to apologize for this outage. Everyone at CrowdStrike understands the seriousness of this situation. We quickly identified the issue and implemented fixes, allowing us to focus on restoring our customers’ systems, which was our highest priority.
– explained CrowdStrike founder and CEO George Kurtz on Friday.
How is it possible that the error of just one company, and probably just one person, led to a global outage? Could a similar incident, but on an even larger scale, happen in the future? What did Friday’s blackout teach us?
CYBER OUTAGES/ Photo: REUTERS/Octavio Jones
Technological globalization has its dark side
Today, we live in an era of mergers and acquisitions and the growing power of corporations, which is perhaps most visible in the technology industry. The top ten largest companies by market capitalization now include six big tech companies, and companies such as Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google have been “devouring” smaller competitors for years, only deepening their market dominance.
Of course, if you asked the CEOs of these companies, they would tell you that all of this is a win-win for their customers. After all, they can use a variety of services that are now all under the umbrella of one company. Just look at Amazon, which started as a bookstore and now has the largest e-commerce platform in the world, provides server services (AWS), a streaming service (Prime Video), a gaming platform (Prime Gaming), etc.
The largest companies by market capitalization https://companiesmarketcap.com/
This technological globalization and basing the entire IT infrastructure on the services of a few selected companies has its dark side, however, as we saw during Friday’s blackout. As it turned out, CrowdStrike software was used by as many as 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies and over half of Fortune 1000 corporations.
This problem was pointed out by Marbue Brown, an IT industry expert and former Microsoft manager. “The scale of this failure was so serious because many companies use the same provider. And it’s not just about the number of companies, but the profile of their business. We’re talking about large corporations that touch almost every aspect of our lives,” Brown said in an interview with KTLA.
Windows’ share in the global market for desktop operating systems is even greater, reaching over 70 percent. If Microsoft had more competitors today, if more companies used software from other manufacturers, the scale of Friday’s blackout would be disproportionately smaller. The fact is that this failure did not affect, for example, computers with MacOS and Linux systems, as confirmed by CrowdStrike.
CYBER OUTAGES/ Photo: REUTERS/Aap
No system is completely secure
Have you ever heard that computers with the MacOS system cannot be infected with viruses? I have come across such declarations many times. The problem is that there is not a shred of truth in the stories about completely safe and failure-free software.
In fact, Apple computers were less frequently attacked in the past. There was also less malware designed for the operating system. But that was simply because the devices were much less popular than Windows devices. It simply wasn’t worth it for criminals to attack them. As Apple’s market share grew, so did many more exploits for macOS vulnerabilities.
– explains Adam Behan, who specializes in, among other things, the law of new technologies and cybercrime, in an interview with Next.Gazeta.pl.
We have to accept that software failures will still happen, and even the best security measures won’t protect us from them. This is because these systems are made by humans, and humans by their very nature make mistakes, although the consequences aren’t always as dire as in the case of the blackout caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update.
Software manufacturers need to end the YOLO philosophy
It is all the more important that all implementations – even cosmetic ones – are preceded by thorough testing. Unfortunately, recently many companies in the IT sector have been delighted with the YOLO philosophy (You Only Live Once). In great simplification, it involves quickly implementing updates on all devices at the same time, which we saw in the case of CrowdStrike.
Experts point out that a much safer implementation strategy is, for example, Canary. In this case, updates first reach a limited number of devices, and only then – if no errors appear – are they implemented globally.
Another strategy that could protect us from a global blackout is to abandon automatic deployment. In such a case, the software manufacturer informs customers that they can install the update themselves. Of course, this also has its downsides. You can imagine a scenario in which a given company “forgets” to install a critical security patch and then falls victim to a hacker attack.
5) The world must prepare for global hacking attacks
Although Friday’s incident was not the result of cybercriminals, as CrowdStrike confirmed on Friday, we can be certain that hackers were closely monitoring these events and taking notes. They learned, for example, that one seemingly minor software error can cause global chaos. Suffice it to say that on Friday, airlines had to cancel 5,078 flights, which was 5 percent of all flights scheduled for that day. And that’s just one of the industries affected by the incident.
We can be sure that cybercriminals will attempt to cause a blackout in the near future. Many experts point out that this time it may be aimed at critical infrastructure. Here, energy and telecommunications are of course at the forefront.
No country or developed society today can function without electricity. Even a short blackout could be catastrophic.
– Mikko Hypponen points out in an interview with Next.gazeta.pl. – In recent years, there have been a number of mergers of companies in the energy sector. Such mergers involved combining several IT systems. Every cybersecurity specialist knows perfectly well that with such synergies, it is easy to make mistakes and loopholes that can later be exploited by cybercriminals,” warns the expert.
Source: Gazeta
Mabel is a talented author and journalist with a passion for all things technology. As an experienced writer for the 247 News Agency, she has established a reputation for her in-depth reporting and expert analysis on the latest developments in the tech industry.
