'Unprecedented' global internet outage hits Windsor border crossings, hospitals

[Jimaz]

'Unprecedented' global internet outage hits Windsor border crossings, hospitals

Windsor police on Friday were advising motorists to avoid local border crossings, and area hospitals were warning of possible cancelled procedures and longer ER wait times due to an unprecedented worldwide internet outage.

Computer systems at businesses and public services around the globe were disrupted after a botched update of a widely used cybersecurity program took down Microsoft Corp. systems.

Although Microsoft and the American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike announced later Friday morning that the issues causing the global outage had been resolved, some problems continued to persist.

Long delays were experienced by commuters on Friday morning at the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel as border officers switched to manual processing, but traffic appeared to flow unimpeded at the Ambassador Bridge.

The significant internet outage impacting Microsoft caused global disruptions to flights, banks, and hospitals, with issues and delays persisted for hours despite the technology company’s efforts to resolve the problem affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.

In a tweet on Friday morning to X, formerly Twitter, Windsor Regional Hospital advised that “patients should expect delays in service and potential appointment cancellations following a Microsoft/CrowdStrike global IT outage, which has been confirmed not to be a cyber-attack.”...

I'd guess this will all blow over fairly quickly but what should not be ignored is that it was a global failure due to the homogeneity of Microsoft and other monopolies.

One account estimated the cost in billions of dollars.

[jcole]

This was not a Microsoft issue; it was Crowdstrike and they admit it. A corrupt update for their extremely convoluted protection suite. I briefly had Crowdstrike Falcon on the PCs I manage at a local library and found it "heavy" and unmanageable and I'm not a lover of cloud based anything so I uninstalled it and found something local that I like better. Now I'm even happier I did. Nearly all the other libraries in our network had issues with this yesterday.

'Unprecedented' global internet outage hits Windsor border crossings, hospitals



I'd guess this will all blow over fairly quickly but what should not be ignored is that it was a global failure due to the homogeneity of Microsoft and other monopolies.

One account estimated the cost in billions of dollars.

[Jimaz]

This was not a Microsoft issue; it was Crowdstrike and they admit it....

Yes, that's been pretty widely reported.

The problem with Microsoft is that it provides a homogeneous environment where otherwise small problems like this can have very large effects. E.g., I haven't seen any reports of this affecting Unix systems {which I think is the only reason Microsoft is mentioned at all in these reports}.

The fundamental problem is even more widespread. Monopolies and centralized power in general have been growing unchecked for decades. It's starting to bite us and for some reason people seem reluctant to notice.

Congrats on dodging this Crowdstrike bullet, jcole. That's a good feeling. I hope you get credit for that.

[jcole]

It only affected Microsoft because that's what it was written for; it didn't effect Linux or Apple because Crowdstrike had to write those for the platform they were intended for. It wasn't a universal file that should have been accepted by all platforms; they need to adapt them for each op sys and they screwed the pooch when it came to MS. It seem sort of backward to blame MS for a file they didn't create. They screw up enough with they weekly and quarterly updates; they shouldn't be blamed for the one they didn't create.

[13606Cedargrove]

Not a technical guy, but in the cloud all the time due to tax software and other applications. Our firm had some minor problems, too.

I believe this whole system as it exists, including satellite-based navigation and other systems our military uses, has left us extremely vulnerable. I understand the Navy and Air Force no longer trains its personnel in celestial navigation! I hope I am wrong about that. The war in Ukraine is stalling out because the Russians have figured out how to defeat our electronic/satellite based systems.

Don't be surprised if we wake up one morning and none of this works.

Rant over.

[Zacha341]

Perhaps some grand DEI idea?

...I understand the Navy and Air Force no longer trains its personnel in celestial navigation! I hope I am wrong about that...

Don't be surprised if we wake up one morning and none of this works.

Rant over.

[Zacha341]

Yes. I too am not over-sold on cloud-based apps and storage options. 'Cloud' means a remote server [someone else's/ elsewhere] that can go down or suddenly become inaccessible [for whatever reason].

I still use some portable drives to back up photos for example.

...I'm not a lover of cloud based anything so I uninstalled it and found something local that I like better. Now I'm even happier I did. Nearly all the other libraries in our network had issues with this yesterday.

[Richard]

Pretty scary when a majority of the world’s governments and infrastructure runs on Microsoft,a company that has never played nice with outside vendors.

[jcole]

I too have my data backed up on external drives and one large internal drive in my pc; it can always be pulled out and put into another pc if my big machine takes a dump. At work everything is on external drives that I alternate.

Yes. I too am not over-sold on cloud-based apps and storage options. 'Cloud' means a remote server [someone else's/ elsewhere] that can go down or suddenly become inaccessible [for whatever reason].

I still use some portable drives to back up photos for example.

[Lowell]

Microsoft wasn’t just a completely innocent bystander.

"On Thursday night, Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure experienced a widespread outage. By Friday morning, the situation turned into a perfect storm when the security firm CrowdStrike released a flawed software update that sent Windows computers into a catastrophic reboot spiral.

[JBMcB]

It's a no-win situation. I understand the concerns with homogeneity, but modern computer systems are so complex, keeping a single system up and running all the time is incredibly difficult. Now imagine the complexity of maintaining two completely different systems.

Every OS has problems. MacOS has stability issues from time to time. Linux has issues quite often, depending largely on which of the several hundred distributions you use. The only other still supported major server OS is AIX by IBM, which only runs on very expensive enterprise servers [[a cheap model is $50,000) Solaris is probably the best, most stable server operating system, but Oracle has put it on life support and it hasn't had a major release in six years.

In my opinion, the issue wasn't with homogeneity, but with the deployment of Windows itself. These kiosks and booking terminals should have been deployed steady-state. That is, what is stored locally never changes. All they do is communicate with a server. The stuff on the local machines barely needs to change, ever, and nothing needs to be saved locally. You can set up these machines to not make any changes to the local drive. Every time you boot, the system is wiped and is replaced with a clean, local copy of the system image.

You don't need to push antivirus updates to these things. You shouldn't be pushing OS or application updates that regularly - maybe once or twice a year. They don't [[or shouldn't) access the internet. The fact that IT people had to go to each kiosk and fix them manually means there is no remote management set up on these things, either. The people setting these things up did it on the cheap, and did it stupidly.

[Jimaz]

Are we too reliant on technology?

The effects of Friday's Global computer glitch are still being felt. And while almost every business was impacted, the airline industry was one of the hardest hit. According to Flight Aware, over the weekend, there were nearly 32,000 delays and over 7500 cancellations, and today isn't shaping up to be much better. Right now, there are 440 delays in the U.S. and 521 cancellations. At DTW specifically, 10 flights are delayed and 51 flights are cancelled. This tech scare has a lot of people wondering: are we too reliant on technology? I spoke to a couple of former IT professionals, and a couple who dealt with the travel chaos first-hand.

[jcole]

In my opinion, for what it's worth, we are definitely too Cloud dependent if anything. Maybe I'm a dinosaur but I prefer to have copies of my software on hand and all of my data backed up on premise.

[Richard]

Well it has brought us YouTube ,where you discover all kinds of interesting things,like explorers who show you the hardened underground bunkers that MA Bell had in place all over the country so if there was a nuclear war,you could still pick up the phone.

But they are long emptied out.

We at not dependent on tech,it’s become our god that we bow to,it is centered around our lives and it keeps showing us how much it is a part of our,not lives but our very existence.

Removed one part of its cog and it shuts us down,our military runs on it as does every other aspect of our lives,take out a few satellites and you can literally shut a country down and create so much chaos within hand you do not even need to invade it.

You can still have an accounting ledger with DOS and a fax machine still provided the same speed as email.

[canuck]

In my opinion, for what it's worth, we are definitely too Cloud dependent if anything. Maybe I'm a dinosaur but I prefer to have copies of my software on hand and all of my data backed up on premise.

I get what you’re saying, but my credit union had one employee sell info on millions of accounts he had copied on a set of keys. The whole of the digital world has massive vulnerabilities.

[jcole]

Actually 50 yrs ago someone could have made Xerox copies and done the same thing

I get what you’re saying, but my credit union had one employee sell info on millions of accounts he had copied on a set of keys. The whole of the digital world has massive vulnerabilities.

[Richard]

Actually 50 yrs ago someone could have made Xerox copies and done the same thing

Up until a few years ago,that’s how you could create a new identity,cover the name on a birth certificate,Xerox a copy birth certificate,type a new name in and make another copy.

Use that to get a DL and good to go,that why now certified originals are the only thing they take.

AT&T just paid hackers $370,000 not to release the millions of names they stole from their data base ,when a majority of that was already available for sale on the dark web.

If it is connected to the internet,it’s vulnerable.

In the 90s I bought at government auction 2 Cray super computers that came from USDA ,used to sell the processing power to universities big corporations and even auto manufacturers by the minute,had to pay IT people 24/7 to watch it every second for people trying to hack into it back then hackers were doing it just for fun.

The T3 lines coming in were like $3k a month and they were so open you could climb inside,there was almost zero security by the provider.

[canuck]

Actually 50 yrs ago someone could have made Xerox copies and done the same thing

Sure.

But seriously, what about the conspicuousness of it? Who is going to cart 40 boxes of xeroxes when you can swipe all of that on a gizmo the size of bic
lighter, in a couple of minutes?

[southen]

Perhaps some grand DEI idea?

Close. Celestial navigation wasn't woke enough.

[Richard]

Well all of the aliens do look alike,the same color and cannot tell the difference between the sexes,so maybe DEI was really the brain child of aliens.

[Lowell]

As internet connectivity and dependency has grown, I have many times mused over the idea that we need to create what I like to call the "analog net".

This would be a basic set up where each of us has computing power with a sufficient body of knowledge, the energy to drive it, and means of communication that are independent of any grids.

Think of a home or business with a solar or thermal power generation, storage batteries, a local AI agent [yes those are here] for the knowledge base, and HAM radio for distant communications. Along with that a network of hand-to-hand messaging and broadcasting. Think of the old time village cryer and Paul Revere.

This is obviously impractical for big interconnected business systems, like airlines, but may be practical in case of hospitals that certainly have that at the power generation level, and for households.

I'm still foggy as to how/if this could all be enabled but think it needs consideration. What did we do before the internet or electronic communications?

Thoughts?

[Richard]

Anybody but boomers would not be able to survive,you would have to tech them how to read a map,read a book etc.

When you really think about it over 60 % of rural farms did not have electricity until after WW2 and they fed the country,even in the 70s my uncles farm still had a 3 party phone.

I have to ask why? I ran businesses before all of these expensive gadgets,phone on the wall or desk worked just fine.

It’s kinda funny,when the war broke out in Ukraine,Ukraine jammed the GPS and pulled up the street signs,the Russians could not get organized because they kept getting lost with no maps.

But there are a lot of people actually living off grid and not connected,you just do not hear about them because they are not connected.

I think anybody born after 1980 would just be lost and they would think a ham radio is a sandwich.

IOS 18 is including a localized AÍ and Laptops.

[JBMcB]

Think of a home or business with a solar or thermal power generation, storage batteries, a local AI agent [yes those are here] for the knowledge base, and HAM radio for distant communications. Along with that a network of hand-to-hand messaging and broadcasting. Think of the old time village cryer and Paul Revere.

Some of this already exists and has existed for quite a while.
https://mi-arpsc.org/ares/

My son is active with the local ham radio group that works with this organization. He's worked a few events, including helping with the dream cruise.

The problem is, with cell phones being ubiquitous and cheap, most people don't see the need for ham radio and aren't interested. The sad thing is the gear has become so cheap and easy to use, it's a piece of cake to get started. The only hurdle is the exam, which, I'll admit, if you aren't technically inclined at all, can be difficult.

[Jimaz]

This talk about HAM radios stirred up a memory of a quirky experiment done in the 1970s for the TRS-80 computer. The TRS-80 was designed to load programs from a normal audio cassette player supplied with the computer. Someone had the bright idea of broadcasting a computer program over the radio that could be recorded on a cassette tape that could then be loaded into the TRS-80.

If memory serves, it actually worked! {Although I doubt very reliably.}

• BASIC Programs Over Shortwave

[JBMcB]

If memory serves, it actually worked! {Although I doubt very reliably.}

That's interesting! How well it would have worked depends on what standard the TRS-80 used for tape storage. Early tape schemes used FSK, which was designed for radio, and probably would have worked pretty well. Later on everyone switched to proprietary encodings that stored more information and was faster, but more susceptible to noise.

Somewhere I have a vinyl record with a program for the Commodore 64 stored on it, meant to be recorded on to tape and loaded that way.