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

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

189 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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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If AV suddenly stops working, it could mean the AV is compromised. A BSOD is a desirable outcome in that case. Booting a compromised system anyway is bad code.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You know there's a whole other scenario where the system can simply boot the last known good config.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

And what guarantees that that "last known good config" is available, not compromised and there's no malicious actor trying to force the system to use a config that has a vulnerability?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The following:

An internal backup of previous configs
Encrypted copies
Massive warnings in the system that current loaded config has failed integrity check

There's a load of other checks that could be employed. This is literally no different than securing the OS itself.

This is essentially a solved problem, but even then it's impossible to make any system 100% secure. As the person you replied to said: "this is poor code"

Edit: just to add, failure for the system to boot should NEVER be the desired outcome. Especially when the party implementing that is a 3rd party service. The people who setup these servers are expecting them to operate for things to work. Nothing is gained from a non-booting critical system and literally EVERYTHING to lose. If it's critical then it must be operational.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

The 3rd party service is AV. You do not want to boot a potentially compromised or insecure system that is unable to start its AV properly, and have it potentially access other critical systems. That's a recipe for a perhaps more local but also more painful disaster. It makes sense that a critical enterprise system does not boot if something is off. No AV means the system is a security risk and should not boot and connect to other critical/sensitive systems, period.

These sorts of errors should be alleviated through backup systems and prevented by not auto-updating these sorts of systems.

Sure, for a personal PC I would not necessarily want a BSOD, I'd prefer if it just booted and alerted the user. But for enterprise servers? Best not.