It was a rough end to the week for Microsoft, the software company CrowdStrike, and all its customers worldwide. The blunder that most of you know caused BSOD and massive problems for everything from banks to airlines is one of the biggest documented IT blunders in history.
So, when it comes time to investigate who or what caused the failure, fingers are being pointed left and right, and now Microsoft is choosing to blame a large part of the problems that occurred on the EU, which forced Microsoft to give third-party developers the same kernel access as Windows.
As per The Wall Street Journal, CrowdStrike’s bug was so devastating because its security software, called Falcon, runs at the most central level of Windows, the kernel, so when an update to Falcon caused it to crash, it also took out the brains of the operating system. That is when the blue screen of death appeared.
A Microsoft spokesman said it cannot legally wall off its operating system in the same way Apple does because of an understanding it reached with the European Commission following a complaint. In 2009, Microsoft agreed it would give makers of security software the same level of access to Windows that Microsoft gets.
Apple, which previously also offered the same kernel access for third-party manufacturers, chose to cut off this access a few years ago, precisely for security reasons, something that Microsoft could not do because of the agreement with the EU.
What do you think about this, and were you affected in any form by the CrowdStrike crash last week?