'Completely unprecedented' outage causes havoc with IT systems across globe — as it happened
www.abc.net.au
A massive IT systems outage caused by issues with CrowdStrike software affects banks, airports, supermarkets and media companies across Australia and around the world.

All our servers and company laptops went down at pretty much the same time. Laptops have been bootlooping to blue screen of death. It’s all very exciting, personally, as someone not responsible for fixing it.

Apparently caused by a bad CrowdStrike update.

Edit: now being told we (who almost all generally work from home) need to come into the office Monday as they can only apply the fix in-person. We’ll see if that changes over the weekend…

  • kadotux@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    982·
    5 months ago

    Here’s the fix: (or rather workaround, released by CrowdStrike) 1)Boot to safe mode/recovery 2)Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike 3)Delete the file matching “C-00000291*.sys” 4)Boot the system normally

    • StV2@lemmy.worldEnglish
      604·
      5 months ago

      It’s disappointing that the fix is so easy to perform and yet it’ll almost certainly keep a lot of infrastructure down for hours because a majority of people seem too scared to try to fix anything on their own machine (or aren’t trusted to so they can’t even if they know how)

      • HaleHirsute@infosec.pubEnglish
        641·
        5 months ago

        They also gotta get the fix through a trusted channel and not randomly on the internet. (No offense to the person that gave the info, it’s maybe correct but you never know)

        • kadotux@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          141·
          5 months ago

          Yeah, and it’s unknown if CS is active after the workaround or not (source: hackernews commentator)

        • letsgo@lemm.eeEnglish
          8·
          5 months ago

          True, but knowing what the fix might be means you can Google it and see what comes back. It was on StackOverflow for example, but at the time of this comment has been taken offline for moderation - whatever that means.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          2·
          5 months ago

          Meh. Even if it bricked crowdstrike instead of helping, you can just restore the file you deleted. A file in that folder can’t brick a windows system.

      • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
        47·
        5 months ago

        This sort of fix might not be accessible to a lot of employees who don’t have admin access on their company laptops, and if the laptop can’t be accessed remotely by IT then the options are very limited. Trying to walk a lot of nontechnical users through this over the phone won’t go very well.

        • AccountMaker@slrpnk.netEnglish
          16·
          5 months ago

          Yup, that’s me. We booted into safe mode, tried navigating into the CrowdStrike folder and boom: permission denied.

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
            10·
            5 months ago

            Half our shit can’t even boot into safe mode because it’s encrypted and we don’t have the keys rofl

            • Oderus@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              5 months ago

              If you don’t have the keys, what the hell are you doing? We have bitlocker enabled and we have a way to get the recovery key so it’s not a problem. Just a huge pain in the ass.

      • thehatfox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        28·
        5 months ago

        Might seem easy to someone with a technical background. But the last thing businesses want to be doing is telling average end users to boot into safe mode and start deleting system files.

        If that started happening en masse we would quickly end up with far more problems than we started with. Plenty of users would end up deleting system32 entirely or something else equally damaging.

        • Ookami38@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          6·
          5 months ago

          I do IT for some stores. My team lead briefly suggested having store managers try to do this fix. I HARD vetoed that. That’s only going to do more damage.

      • r00ty@kbin.life
        14·
        5 months ago

        It might not even be that. A lot of places have many servers (and even more virtual servers) running crowdstrike. Some places also seem to have it on endpoints too.

        That’s a lot of machines to manually fix.

        • Oderus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          You can do it over the phone. I just did a few dozen this morning and it was relatively easy.

          • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            “yes, now open the file explorer. No, that’s internet explorer… Yes, with the files. Now go to this pc… No, I know you are at this pc, but the entry on the left. No that’s the keyboard. On the screen. Where it says this pc, on the left. The left. The left. … That’s the start menu. Okay, let’s try this a different way. On the keyboard, press the windows key and r. No, simultaneously. The windows key is the one with the flag. Yes. R. As in Romeo. Yes I know a window appeared, very good. Now type c colon backslash windows backslash system 32… Yes like the numbers. No, that’s a semicolon. Yes. Shift. On the keyboard. Simultaneously. And another backslash drivers. Click OK. What error? Why did you type that after the colon? It needs to go at the end. Yes, the end. Yes. Yes. Now click OK. What error? Read the text you typed to me. Why didn’t you delete the semicolon? Yes. Yes. What error?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

            yeah, sometimes that’s just not an option…

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        I wouldn’t fix it if it’s not my responsibly at work. What if I mess up and break things further?

        When things go wrong, best to just let people do the emergency process.

    • cheeseburger@lemmy.caEnglish
      42·
      5 months ago

      I’m on a bridge still while we wait for Bitlocker recovery keys, so we can actually boot into safemode, but the Bitkocker key server is down as well…

    • WagnasT@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      5 months ago

      Man, it sure would suck if you could still get to safe mode from pressing f8. Can you imagine how terrible that’d be?

    • resin85@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      Not that easy when it’s a fleet of servers in multiple remote data centers. Lots of IT folks will be spending their weekend sitting in data center cages.