Multiple reboot hasn't worked for me yet - and I'm not sure it would work? Does it rely on updating a file before the machine crashes or something?
I can only really imagine central IT will be disseminating boot disks to branches and getting local IT support to roll it out as people show up. So I suppose I'll keep trying the reboot until then.
Requires a remote update via whatever the online domain controller is...so if it's office online microsoft might have done it...if it's a corporate domain controller they might not have...and it might not take before the machine borks.....it works for some people...dependent on a laughable range of circumstances......basically just sit there turning your machine on and off until it's time to clock out.
....and of course the old IT joke "I need to get a faster computer, so that I can reboot windows quicker" is particularly hilarious here.
I kind of have to if I want to get paid. And they need me to get paid if they want to save 6 million per year.
With that sort of financial upside you should be a relative priority case. After those higher up bosses who don't actually do anything but need to check their diary for their next corporate beano.
Like the security folks and DBAs, fraud only gets attention when things are bad, sadly.
Our computers and servers were fine today. Does that mean they are likely to be fine going forwards, or am I going to get caught later?
Do you use Crowdstrike?
True... Not that I know of, but our servers are remote and outsourced so I cant be sure
Not likely that they will develop a problem if they haven't so far. Not impossible, but unlikely.
Not this particular one anyway.
I would imagine the update was removed asap, so as long as you logged on after it was deleted, you should be fine.
I'm still trying to boot-loop back in.
Back in and working. Handholding by it guy telling me passwords and stuff. I did not write them down.
Looks like stuff kept working largely.
I was reading about the whole Kaspersky thing this morning and the 'co-incidence' of their enforced withdrawal from the American market (relatively) shortly before the great IT jp-age of yesterday and thought "why isn't our esteemed webmong-in-chief all over this?".
Me? I am all over it. I haven't actively used windows for over ten years.
The update that caused the issues, do you have to take it automatically or could/should someone in our Company test it first?
I assume you can but it's largely been thought unnecessary as the provider wouldn't release an update that hadn't been fully tested....?
There's a key point here...that is a fundamental deal breaker for me when it comes to windows.
Much of the software is completely proprietary and closed source. That means that you have absolutely no idea what the software is doing on your computer (including the operating system). It does whatever it's been programmed to do. You are told whatever the software provider decide to tell you about it. There are things that can be done to track symptoms (if you like) with various levels of computer doctor....but mostly things are taken at trust. This trust is regularly abused with various levels of telemetry and data collection. Largely which you have little to no control of. Some large organisations have code preview agreements with companies like microsoft where they can review the code (subject to NDA agreements) but this means that relatively few eyes are on it, making spotting problems statistically more problematic, and expensive (cf open source software where anyone with a passing interest can have a shufty).
Crowdstrike is a trusted microsoft partner. They can modify the operating system of your computer, without your intervention. If you have a locked down corporate computer they can modify it to levels that you can't. As can microsoft and other partners. They can push a modification to your computer without your agreement (in practice....who is not going to do 'official' updates and leave their machine subject to known vulnerabilities?), oversight, or the opportunity to scrutinise the impact. This happens all the time with updates turning back on telemetry and all sorts of things that you might have turned off, but they want even, if you don't.
The windows platform itself is a bag of spanners continually being reforged and broken from a starting point of slinging a chucked together operating system to get single user microcomputers running BASIC overnight (as opposed to unix family operating systems being rooted in a multi user operating system built from the ground up, the initial version having taken a million man hours to craft).
Long story short. Other organisations are constantly fiddling with your windows computers, and there's not a damn thing that you or your IT support team can do about it. The whole thing is a bag of spanners, and it's a functional nightmare before you even get into the security implications of poor and unscrutinised code, never mind the scope for interference from intentional bad actors.
What windows is very good for is providing a platform where you have to buy things at large cost to get it to do the things that you want it to do...particularly if everyone collaborates on keeping you locked in. Which is quite an effort over such a diverse ecosystem...apple struggle to do it well just making up stupid rules for their own stuff.
How are you defining fully tested? How do you test against every software version, every different hardware, combination of drivers and libraries.....even if you have a team of 100 people, how do you test a billion combinations of hardware and software? Open source means that you publish the code, and anyone can test and report problems on any combination of hardware and software...with closed systems, the world is sat twiddling their thumbs while IT support get around to you.
Just a yes or a no would’ve done
