Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Minor reformat of citation
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
Signed-off-by: David A. Wheeler <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>
  • Loading branch information
david-a-wheeler committed Dec 10, 2024
1 parent e1587df commit c6f4e86
Showing 1 changed file with 1 addition and 1 deletion.
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion secure_software_development_fundamentals.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -5400,7 +5400,7 @@ When disposing, make sure you fully destroy any data you are supposed to destroy

> 😱 STORY TIME: 2024 Crowdstrike-related IT outages

> On 2024-07-19 the American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike distributed an update to its Falcon Sensor security software. Unfortunately, this update was defective. This crashed about 8.5 million computers running Microsoft Windows, which were then unable to restart correctly. Massive disruptions around the world followed. Over 5,000 air flights were cancelled worldwide and many government services (including emergency services) became unavailable. Worldwide damage has been estimated to be at least US$10 billion (["Here comes the wave of insurance claims for the CrowdStrike outage"](https://archive.ph/20240722161959/https://www.businessinsider.com/businesses-claiming-losses-crowdstrike-outage-insurance-billions-losses-cyber-policies-2024-7) by Kit Lian, 2024-07-22, Business Insider).
> On 2024-07-19 the American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike distributed an update to its Falcon Sensor security software. Unfortunately, this update was defective. This crashed about 8.5 million computers running Microsoft Windows, which were then unable to restart correctly. Massive disruptions around the world followed. Over 5,000 air flights were cancelled worldwide and many government services (including emergency services) became unavailable. Worldwide damage has been estimated to be at least US$10 billion (["Here comes the wave of insurance claims for the CrowdStrike outage"](https://archive.ph/20240722161959/https://www.businessinsider.com/businesses-claiming-losses-crowdstrike-outage-insurance-billions-losses-cyber-policies-2024-7), Kit Lian, 2024-07-22, *Business Insider*).

> Causal analysis began immediately. The company routinely provided updates to Falcon Sensor, including its underlying software and various "template instances". The underlying *software* had been tested, and the template instances had been validated before shipping updates. However, the template instance content validator had a bug and did not notice any problem (["CrowdStrike blames a test software bug for that giant global mess it made"](https://archive.ph/20240724112421/https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/24/crowdstrike_preliminary_incident_report/#selection-735.0-783.10), Simon Sharwood, 2024-07-24, *The Register*). Note that the organization did not perform an end-to-end test of the entire update (including the updated software and template instances) before shipping it, and instead relied solely on validation of isolated components. In addition, updates were not staged. Instead, all relevant systems were updated at the same time, maximizing damage if there was a serious problem in an update.

Expand Down

0 comments on commit c6f4e86

Please sign in to comment.