Nah, I don’t buy that. When you’re in critical infrastructure like that it’s your job to anticipate things like people being above or below versions. This isn’t the latest version of flappy bird, this is kernel level code that needs to be space station level accurate, that they’re pushing remotely to massive amounts of critical infrastructure.

I won’t say this was one guy, and I definitely don’t think it was malicious. This is just standard corporate software engineering, where deadlines are pushed to the max and QA is seen as an expense, not an investment. They’re learning the harsh realities of cutting QA processes right now, and I say good. There is zero reason a bit of this magnitude should have gone out. I mean, it was an empty file of zeroes. How did they not have any pipelines to check that file, code in the kernel itself to validate the file, or anyone put eyes on the file before pushing it.

This is a massive company wide fuckup they had, and it’s going to end up with them reporting to Congress and many, many courts on what happened.

Not just Crowdstrike - any vendor that does automatic updates, which is more and more each day. Microsoft too big for a bad actor to do as you describe? Nope. Anything relying on free software? Supply chain vulnerabilities are huge and well documented - its only a matter of time.