CrowdStrike effectively bricked windows, Mac and Linux today.
Windows machines won’t boot, and Mac and Linux work is abandoned because all their users are on twitter making memes.
Incredible work.
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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It's not Microsoft's fault a third party company wrote a kernel module that crashes the OS.
Unlike the mobile world where apps are severely limited and sandboxed, the desktop is completely the opposite. Microsoft has tried many times to limit what programs can do, but encountered a lot of resistance and ultimately had to let it go.
Windows requires that antuviruses run at kernel level, programs which are notoriously buggy and harmful. It is a design flaw to require users to implement mandatory security features in this way. (it is literally not possible to run windows 10 or 11 without an antivirus) Similar security programs on Linux do not run at kernel level, nor should they.
Furthermore, every copy of Windows since Windows 7 requires that kernel modules are signed by Microsoft themselves. Microsoft personally signed off on this code that crashed millions of computers.
Antivirus software for Linux also has kernel access. You can't intercept OS operations like opening files or launching executables without kernel access. And some of the companies I worked at also required antivirus software on Linux servers.
You can absolutely run Windows without an anti-virus, it has plenty of security features built-in.
It's all a matter of trust. Do you trust your engineers to properly configure machines to be secure and not run exes from dubious sources, or do you trust a cybersecurity company to do it for you? Anti-virus software nowadays is more about restricting users from doing stupid shit.
Oh, and signed drivers aren't about Microsoft validating and testing every driver. It's about verifying that the driver comes from a trusted company and isn't tampered with.