{"id":1800,"date":"2024-07-20T00:04:18","date_gmt":"2024-07-20T00:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/20\/global-it-outage-all-it-took-was-a-few-lines-of-code-and-millions-of-machines-were-dead-the-risks-of-complexity\/"},"modified":"2024-07-20T00:04:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-20T00:04:18","slug":"global-it-outage-all-it-took-was-a-few-lines-of-code-and-millions-of-machines-were-dead-the-risks-of-complexity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/20\/global-it-outage-all-it-took-was-a-few-lines-of-code-and-millions-of-machines-were-dead-the-risks-of-complexity\/","title":{"rendered":"Global IT outage: All it took was a few lines of code and millions of machines were dead \u2013 the risks of complexity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This wasn\u2019t supposed to happen.<\/p>\n

We were told that as the internet matured, that this kind of thing \u2013 a single error causing a domino effect taking out millions of machines<\/strong> \u2013 was supposed to become less and less likely. There would be more and more servers and cables distributed in more and more places, making a single point of failure increasingly unlikely.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Global IT outage latest: \u2018Huge increase\u2019 in 999 calls<\/strong><\/p>\n

Instead, what today\u2019s episode<\/strong> \u2013 in which an update from a company called CrowdStrike<\/strong> to customers using its services around the world essentially broke the Windows operating system on their computers \u2013 has underlined is that often the more complex a system becomes, the more vulnerable it is to collapse.<\/p>\n

The irony at the centre of the chaos <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The great irony, of course, is that CrowdStrike\u2019s raison d\u2019\u00eatre is to prevent moments like this from happening. The company\u2019s \u201cFalcon Sensor\u201d is a product used to prevent cyber attacks \u2013 a complex programme best thought of as a kind of super anti-virus package, which, in order to do its job, gets privileged access to more parts of your machine than regular software.<\/p>\n

But it so happens the latest update to Falcon Sensor, uploaded overnight to computers around the world, had a dodgy bit of code in it, which caused Windows machines to crash.<\/p>\n

How can it be resolved?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right now, it looks as if the only way it can be resolved is by technicians rebooting each machine and manually deleting a particular file (C-00000291*.sys since you asked). In other words, spare a thought for your company\u2019s technicians, because they\u2019re about to have a long weekend.<\/p>\n

But perhaps the most striking lesson from the episode is a more ancient one, laid out by historian Joseph Tainter in his 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies.<\/p>\n

The more complex societies and systems become, the more vulnerable they are to collapse. Tainter was referring to examples like the fall of Rome or the collapse of ancient Mesopotamian civilisation, but one could just as easily apply the logic to modern examples.<\/p>\n

Society\u2019s complexity is making us vulnerable<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lurking beneath Tainter\u2019s thesis was the point that often in a complex society of organisation actors might make decisions which seem sensible but, due to the complexity of the system and their inability to understand it, could actually make it more vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Consider the subprime crisis which triggered the financial crisis of 2008. Mortgages were packaged and repackaged into assets sold, eventually, on to banks which had little understanding of their actual value and their risks. The more complex the system became, the less able people were to comprehend how exposed they were to a catastrophic failure, and the more vulnerable the entire edifice was to collapse.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s ponder the current IT malaise. Let\u2019s ask ourselves: how did it come to be that so many companies around the world had the very same bit of software installed on their systems, making them vulnerable to the very same lines of duff code?<\/p>\n

After all, the vast majority of people working at the companies affected will never have heard of CrowdStrike. Like the bankers presiding over the financial crisis, they had no idea of the potential vulnerabilities lying within their systems.<\/p>\n

But in recent years, as businesses have become more and more concerned about the risk of cyber attacks, they have begun to implement cyber security checks and regulations. These often took the form of a checklist some poor operative had to fill out: how many computers have you got? What operating system? Are they all online? What forms of cyber protection do they have? And so on.<\/p>\n

Now, this might sound like frustrating red tape to many of you, but the reality is that these days some companies stipulate that anyone doing business with them must have fulfilled all the items on the checklist.<\/p>\n

So all of a sudden, salespeople trying to do a deal would discover that they couldn\u2019t do it without complying with the checklist. The company\u2019s financial survival depended on being able to tick the boxes!<\/p>\n

How one company became so powerful <\/strong><\/p>\n

And invariably one of the boxes in those checklists was: do you have an endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution? And if you didn\u2019t have an EDR solution (or, more likely, didn\u2019t know what one was) then invariably you googled EDR and looked for the world\u2019s biggest provider, which just so happened to be\u2026 CrowdStrike.<\/p>\n

Perhaps you spoke to your IT provider and insisted that you needed an EDR. Perhaps they said: \u201coh I wouldn\u2019t do that if I were you\u201d \u2013 but then\u2026 no EDR no sale.<\/p>\n

This is a stylised example, of course, but you see how this kind of thing can happen.<\/p>\n

And hence, gradually and imperceptibly, a large proportion of the world\u2019s companies came \u2013 mostly unbeknownst to their leaders \u2013 to be running the very same piece of software with direct access to the most privileged parts of their computers. And then all it took was a few lines of code and all of those machines were instantly dead \u2013 or rather, they faced the \u201cBlue Screen of Death\u201d.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a reminder here about the risks of complexity.<\/p>\n

Too early to tell extent of disruption and economic damage<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s way too early to put a figure on how much disruption this episode has caused and how much economic damage wrought. The short answer is almost certainly: a lot. Millions of people around the world have been unable to travel, to communicate, to transact. It may well transpire that it has put lives at risk, given it has affected many doctors\u2019 ability to do their job.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best thing that can be taken from today\u2019s chaos is that it might just serve as a cautionary tale which could make our computers that bit safer and more stable in the future. It might remind bosses that cyber security decisions are more than box-ticking exercises \u2013 and sometimes installing cyber security software can backfire.<\/p>\n

It reminds us how dangerous it is if everyone in the world is relying on the same provider. It reminds us about the need for redundancy \u2013 to have backup systems. It reminds us of the dangers of complexity.<\/p>\n

This probably won\u2019t come as much consolation if you\u2019re one of those people whose holiday plans have been disrupted or your business messed around by the IT outage today. But it\u2019s something.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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