this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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Problem is that software cannot deal with unexpected situations like a human brain can. Computers do exactly what a programmer tells it to do, nothing more nothing less. So if a situation arises that the programmer hasn't written code for, then there will be a crash.
Poorly written code can't.
In this case:
Is just poor code.
When talking about the driver level, you can't always just proceed to the next thing when an error happens.
Imagine if you went in for open heart surgery but the doctor forgot to put in the new valve while he was in there. He can't just stitch you up and tell you to get on with it, you'll be bleeding away inside.
In this specific case we're talking about security for business devices and critical infrastructure. If a security driver is compromised, in a lot of cases it may legitimately be better for the computer to not run at all, because a security compromise could mean it's open season for hackers on your sensitive device. We've seen hospitals held random, we've seen customer data swiped from major businesses. A day of downtime is arguably better than those outcomes.
The real answer here is crowdstrike needs a more reliable CI/CD pipeline. A failure of this magnitude is inexcusable and represents a major systemic failure in their development process. But the OS crashing as a result of that systemic failure may actually be the most reasonable desirable outcome compared to any other possible outcome.
In which case this should've been documented behaviour and probably configurable.