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CrowdStrike downtime apparently caused by update that replaced a file with 42kb of zeroes (twiiit.com)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

181 comments fedilink hide all child comments

…according to a Twitter post by the Chief Informational Security Officer of Grand Canyon Education.

So, does anyone else find it odd that the file that caused everything CrowdStrike to freak out, C-00000291-
00000000-00000032.sys was 42KB of blank/null values, while the replacement file C-00000291-00000000-
00000.033.sys was 35KB and looked like a normal, if not obfuscated sys/.conf file?

Also, apparently CrowdStrike had at least 5 hours to work on the problem between the time it was discovered and the time it was fixed.

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[–] shield_gengar 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I thought it was a security definition download; as in, there's nothing short of not connecting to the Internet that you can do about it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well I haven't looked into it for this piece of software but essentially you can prevent automatic updates from applying to the network. Usually because the network is behind a firewall that you can use to block the update until you decide that you like it.

Also a lot of companies recognize that businesses like to check updates and so have more streamlined ways of doing it. For instance Apple have a whole dedicated update system for iOS devices that only businesses have access to where you can decide you don't want the latest iOS and it's easy you just don't enable it and it doesn't happen.

Regardless of the method, what should happen is you should download the update to a few testing computers (preferably also physically isolated from the main network) and run some basic checks to see if it works. In this case the testing computers would have blue screened instantly, and you would have known that this is not an update that you want on your system. Although usually requires a little bit more investigation to determine problems.

[+] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I hear you, but there's no reason to be angry.

When I first learned of the issue, my first thought was, "Hey our update policy doesn't pull the latest sensor to production servers." After a little more research I came to the same conclusion you did, aside from disconnecting from the internet there's nothing we really could have done.

There will always be armchair quarterbacks, use this as an opportunity to teach, life's too short to be upset about such things.