this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
155 points (98.7% liked)

Asklemmy

43788 readers
840 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 207 points 3 months ago (7 children)

It's one of the better EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) tools on the market. For enterprises, they are able to suck down tons of system activities and provide alerting for security teams.

For detection, when I say "tons of data", I mean it. Any background logs related to network activity, filesystem activity, command line info, service info, service actions and much more for every endpoint in an organization.

The response component can block execution of apps or completely isolate an endpoint if it is compromised, only allowing access by security staff.

Because Crowdstrike can (kind of) handle that much data and still be able to run rule checks while also providing SOC services makes them a common choice for enterprises.

The problem is that EDR tools need to run at the kernel level (or at a very high permission level) to be able to read that type data and also block it. This increases the risk of catastrophic problems if specific drivers are blocked by another kind of anti-malware service.

When you look at how EDR tools function, there is little difference between them and well written malware.

Crowdstrike became a choice recently for many companies that got fucked over by Broadcom buying VMWare. VMWare owned another tool, Carbon Black, which became subject to the fuckery of Broadcom so more companies scrambled to Crowdstrike recently.

I hope that was enough of a summary.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

More than enough! Thanks :)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

it was not, go on

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I assume "endpoint" here means a computer that is on the network?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago

Endpoint is any PC/laptop/sign/POS/etc. It's a catchall term for anything that isn't a server. it basically refers to any machine that might be logged into and used by a non-IT user.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

A computer that is used by a user, aka "not a server"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Huh, I didn't catch Carbon Black getting all Broadcom'd to shit. That explains a lot.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Security Operations Center

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Don't forget the Superbowl ad and a ton of money put into marketing. It's not surprising that it attaracted the attention of executives looking for something to tick an audit checkbox.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 3 months ago (9 children)

It kinda is top of its class in endpoint detection and response software. A lot of cyber security insurance policies will demand you have some kind of EDR to be covered and seeing as Crowdstrike is one of the biggest names they get a lot of buyin from institutions and governments.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A lot of companies install it for compliance checkboxing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Apart from fjordbasa's caveat RE "ubiquity" above, this is probably the most succinct answer 😐

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 months ago

It’s not so much that it’s ubiquitous so much as the customers that DID use it were very large and their going down was very noticeable.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Basically, drivers can launch code all the way up to ring 0, the highest level a code can access to. This mean it runs its code with the same priviledges as the kernel itself. The anti-malware solution CrowdStrike makes use of this access to determine what could be going wrong, and deploy solutions accordingly.

If a code running in that level crashes, Windows will rightfully assume there's something really fucked up is going on, and give out a BSOD.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

there's something really fucked up going on

I would actually prefer this kind of error over the usual and equally uninformative "Oopsie! Something went wrong. We're sorry :("

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

The QR code Windows displays usually brings up a documentation page containing more information. Windows also displays a stop code next to the QR code (something like BOOT_DEVICE_NOT_FOUND, MEMORY_MANAGEMENT, CRITICAL_ACCESS_DENIED) and the failing driver's name (if available).

If you want to dig into the details, you can run a program like WhoCrashed, or dig into the crash using windbg to analyse the crashdump file on the hard drive.

I hate the "something went wrong" popups individual applications show (though I admit I've written those myself to deal with errors that should never ever happen), but bluescreens are usually quite informative if you read beyond the indicator for regular people.

Windows used to dump memory locations of the failing driver and even opcodes, the same way Linux does, but that scared a lot of people because they had no hope of understanding any of it. With KASLR the memory addresses are useless anyway, and it's not like modern drivers come with debug symbols to show the crashing method name, so Windows started hiding unnecessary details, which I think is a good thing.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (3 children)

When an operating system allows a single misbehaving program to take down the whole computer and leave it unbootable. I thought we left that behind with Windows 95.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Drivers usually run in kernel space, where a crash can bring the whole system down. This is not exclusive to Windows

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

Yes but only in Windows land do you see jillions of (proprietary) drivers made by 3rd parties. Many of which self-update.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think this is part of the reason Apple is trying real hard to prevent people from loading third party drivers. While that means a lot of hardware simply won't work on their machines, at least a bug can't cause a kernel panic.

As long as third party software is allowed to be loaded into the kernel (drivers, HALs, filters) we'll have bluescreens created by applications. You can go without third party drivers, you just won't be able to game on your computer, or run any antivirus software that wasn't made by your OS vendor, or use any USB peripheral more complicated than a keyboard, or use WiFi.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Apple is introducing a lot of user space frameworks to replace much of the kext level functionality though.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That has been a thing forever. I doubt it will ever go away.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Operating systems are moving as much software out of the low level kernel space as they can. On Windows, the entire GPU driver can crash and the OS will just flash a black screen and recover. Your games and browser probably go down with the driver, but that important Word document you had open in the background will survive.

In this case, there's no way to implement the features at hand anywhere but deep down at the kernel level. It's like anticheat but except for intercepting cheating software it's intercepting all software that looks a bit suspicious. There are ways to protect against this (running applications in a virtual machine with a microkernel of their own for instance) but in practice this won't work for the type of user Windows mostly serves.

As long as software like CrowdStrike is necessary, we run the risk of this stuff crashing. However, the impact doesn't need to be this high; the reason everything went to shit is that every company installed this one piece of software onto their critical machines, rather than diversifying and having two different vendors. They probably don't want twice the management overhead and twice the price, but they could've gone with a competitor on half their systems and only have half their services crash.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

https://youtu.be/4yDm6xNeYas?si=0VzBxIuPEHC4SMaa

This fireship video is a good, short explanation.

load more comments
view more: next β€Ί