[freeopinion]

When a parking valet takes a car on a joy ride and crashes into a tree, we could blame the tree. We could blame the car owner for handing over the key. We could blame the auto manufacturer that didn't provide a "valet mode". We could blame the police for not detecting the joy ride before the crash.

All of these parties could do better (stupid tree!). But the real problem is the valet.

We can say that it is obvious that the electronics-heavy cars of today should anticipate rogue valets and build in protections. But we shouldn't let rogue valets off the hook for damages.

As a consumer, you could choose to only purchase cars that have "valet mode". So should we blame consumers who don't? If so, we should blame the airlines, hospitals, etc.--not Microsoft.

How about we prosecute valets unless they refuse to park cars that don't have "valet mode"?

[naasking]

> All of these parties could do better (stupid tree!). But the real problem is the valet.

No, the operating system is supposed to provide secure access to hardware and isolate independent subsystems so they can't interfere with each other. That's its whole purpose for existing. The fact that people feel they need to deploy CS is a Microsoft failure. Windows is just not a secure OS.

[kasabali]

> The fact that people feel they need to deploy CS is a Microsoft failure

They don't need to deploy shit. Only reason it's deployed because it's a whole racket.

[mynameisvlad]

You’re shifting practically the entirety of the blame to a company that at best was an accomplice to the issue.

I get that you hate Microsoft, but not everything is their fault and it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

> ing. The fact that people feel they need to deploy CS is a Microsoft failure.

CS is also available and widely deployed on Mac and Linux. Is that a failure of Apple and all the distros? It literally took down Debian and Red Hat systems earlier this year, is that also not CS’s fault?

[naasking]

> I get that you hate Microsoft,

I don't.

> CS is also available and widely deployed on Mac and Linux. Is that a failure of Apple and all the distros

Yes. All widely deployed commodity operating systems have terrible security designs. None of them have access control systems that enable the principle least privilege, let alone encourage or prioritize it, and none of them are written in robust languages that make verification of safety or security properties possible. Microsoft has made some headway on partial verification, but it's a far cry from what's needed.

[mynameisvlad]

> Yes. All widely deployed commodity operating systems have terrible security designs. None of them have access control systems that enable the principle least privilege, let alone encourage or prioritize it, and none of them are written in robust languages that make verification of safety or security properties possible. Microsoft has made some headway on partial verification, but it's a far cry from what's needed.

What, exactly, is your solution then? To never use a computer again? Because that's certainly what it sounds like.

[naasking]

Secure, robust operating system designs have been known since the 1970s. KeyKOS, EROS, CapROS. All commodity systems instead use classic access control lists, subject to fundamentally unsolvable access control vulnerabilities. seL4 finally implemented those lessons but it's far from a commodity operating system.

[saagarjha]

Can you point to an OS that can actually be used as a general-purpose OS? Or are you going to tell us that trying to run a web browser is actually what is fundamentally wrong with technology these days?

[goosejuice]

You could also choose to park the car yourself or plan for a secondary mode of transportation if something happened to your car.

Not the best analogy. The organization who deploys said software is responsible for the uptime of their systems. They didn't have to use CrowdStrike and if they do they should have a plan in the event of failure.

[Proziam]

You could also prosecute the establishment that keeps a valet with an abominable record on staff.

Microsoft took no steps to force-eject them from their ecosystem, despite their long history of issues.

[freeopinion]

Just to be clear within the analogy: are you expecting the auto manufacturers to "force-eject" any hotel on Park Ave that has a record of valet mishaps? Or did you mean individual cars should force-eject the valet?

If a Caesars Entertainment property in Macao has enough incidents, should GM update the firmware on their automobiles to force-eject valets at Caesars Entertainment properties in Las Vegas?

Now imagine that GM actually operates valet services in Macao and Las Vegas. Should they be allowed to force-eject valets from competing services?

I am not a Microsoft apologist. I think they should do better. I think Linux and FreeBSD should do better. I personally avoid Microsoft products. But I place more blame on people who use MS products than I do on MS. After all, I never intend to hand my beat up old Corolla over to a valet so why should I have to pay for a "valet mode" feature that Toyota is forced to build into all their cars? Isn't it reasonable that motorcycles, 18-passenger vans, and scooters don't need "valet mode"?

In my book, the auto manufacturer is lower on the list of culprits than the valet, "the establishment that keeps a valet with an abominable record on staff", and the vehicle owner. But some place like Car and Driver could definitely prioritize encouraging GM or Toyota to develop valet modes over berating owners; so I don't mind a place like HN shooting a few arrows at MS. Unless the general public follows their lead and lets bad guys off the hook by shifting too much focus to somebody lower on the list.

[mejutoco]

> Just to be clear within the analogy: are you expecting the auto manufacturers to "force-eject" any hotel on Park Ave that has a record of valet mishaps? Or did you mean individual cars should force-eject the valet?

Not OP, but I think the analogy here is the hotel "fore-ejecting" (firing) the valet with a history of doing joy rides. That seems very reasonable.

[lucianbr]

In the analogy, it seems Microsoft is a car manufacturer. The hotel is the company that bought software from CrowdStrike. The problem is that Microsoft should not control who has access to which APIs, that is a huge can of worms, and actually called anticompetitive by the EU from what I understand. At MS level, either they publish APIs or not. If published, anyone should be able to write software for them. This is especially bad if MS themselves also sell security software that uses the same APIs. It would literally mean MS deciding who is allowed to compete with their security software.

[mejutoco]

I think it works better (please allow me to change it) if Microsoft is the hotel. Crowdstrike is the restaurant inside the hotel. The restaurant is serving poisoned food to the guests, who assume it is a decent restaurant because it is in their hotel.

Also the restaurant has their own entrance without security and questionable people are entering regularly, and they are sneaking into the hotel rooms and stealing some items, breaking the elevator.

At the same time, the hotel is in a litigation process with the restaurants association, because in the past they did not allow any restaurant on their premises. The guests, naturally, do not care about this, since their valuables have been stolen, and they have food poisoning. The reputation of the hotel is tarnished.

[PretzelPirate]

> if Microsoft is the hotel

I don't think this works since Microsoft isn't the hotel. The hotel in your example chooses which restaurants are inside, but Microsoft doesn't. In this example, Microsoft is the builder who built the hotel building for a 3rd party. That 3rd party decides which restaurants it wants to partner with, as well as any other rules about what goes on in the building.

If the builder came around and made changes to ban the 3rd party's restaurant partner, that would cause a ton of issues and maybe get the builder sued.

Microsoft can't decide what can and can't run on their platform - the most they can do is offer certification which can't catch everything, as we just saw with Crowdstrike since they decided to take a shortcut with how they ship updates. Microsoft also had to allow for equal API access so they don't get sued by the EU.

[lucianbr]

Aren't analogies supposed to help clarify things? You've totally lost me.

[ffgjgf1]

But this implies that even the guests who never went to that restaurant and have no links whatsoever to it might somehow still be directly suffering because of its presence.

In reality this doesn’t seem to be the case at all.

[Proziam]

This is the correct interpretation. I am surprised that people took it in different directions.

[Proziam]

I'm expecting restaurant owners to fire bad valets.

Or in Microsoft's case, via regulatory, social, or software, prevent Crowdstrike from causing harm to their customers.

I'm aware it's a sticky regulatory situation, but CS has a history of these failings and the potential damage could be severe. Despite this, no effort (that I am aware of) was made by Microsoft to inform customers that Crowdstrike introduced potential risks, nor to inform regulators, nor to remove the APIs CS depends on.

I don't believe Microsoft is solely responsible, but I do believe that throwing all of the blame for the very real harm that was caused onto CS alone is missing a piece of the puzzle.

Last aside, every large corp has team(s) focused on risk. There's approximately zero chance they didn't discuss CS at some point. The only way this would not have happened is negligence.

[cratermoon]

Back in 2006 Microsoft tried to keep 3rd party vendors out of their ecosystem. <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2006/10/7998/> As a result of a complaint to the EU Microsoft was required to let them have kernel access. <https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/windows_crowdstrike_k...>

[Dylan16807]

Microsoft was required to let them have the same access their own software used. Which seems fair to me. Microsoft can remove those APIs entirely, they just can't restrict them.

[rk06]

Can Microsoft legally ban a competitor for percieved incompetence? I doubt it . partiuclarly seeing how much competence is shown with windows and MS teams software

[sim7c00]

Microsoft assigns driver levels to these guys etc. and allows them to load kernel mode components as protected etc.. If they do not allow that - CS cannot cause such damages. ofcourse, as you pointed out, this will then turn into some lawsuit blaming MS for killing competitors, even if they do it to try and protect their customers.

wonderful world.

[seanmcdirmid]

> Microsoft took no steps to force-eject them from their ecosystem, despite their long history of issues.

I’m pretty sure anti trust law doesn’t allow Microsoft to go anywhere near that kind of action, even if they wanted to be more Apple like.

[Ekaros]

Problem is that the establishment here is well the establishment. That is the state itself. Or at least one of them. As somehow MS is in position where for any slight anti-trust thing they will be prosecuted. Our system is setup to allow these actors in...