[kmeisthax]

Microsoft didn't write the Falcon sensor software nor did they put it in the kernel. In fact, Microsoft has been shouting to the heavens trying to shift the blame from CrowdStrike onto the European Commission, because they want people to irrationally hate antitrust so they can turn Windows into shitty iOS and monopolize the security market (and applications market) for it.

Furthermore, Microsoft does actually have some rules regarding what you can and can't put into a signed kernel driver. Specifically, they won't sign kernel code unless they've seen and tested it first. CrowdStrike deliberately circumvented this rule by implementing their own configuration format - really, just a fancy way of loading code into the kernel that Microsoft doesn't have signing control over.

If there is blame to be had here for Microsoft, maybe it's that their kernel code signing program doesn't scrutinize third-party configuration formats hard enough. I mean, if you sign a code loader, you're really signing all possible programs, making code signing irrelevant. And configuration is more often than not, code in a trenchcoat. It's often Turing-complete, and almost certainly more complicated than the actual programming languages used to write the compiled code being signed off on.

But at the same time I imagine Microsoft tried this and got pushback. That might be why they feel (incorrectly) like they can blame the EU for this. Every third-party security solution does absolutely unspeakable things in kernel space that no one with actual computer science training would sign off on, using configuration to wrestle signing control away from Microsoft. Remember: Crowdstrike is designed to backdoor Windows systems so that their owners know if an attack has succeeded, not to make them more secure from attacks in the first place. Corporations are states[0], and states fundamentally suffer from poor legibility: they own and operate far too much stuff for a tribe[1] of humans to meaningfully control or remember.

The problem is that we have two different entities that all have the ability to stop this madness. When states run into this situation, they impose "joint and several liability", which means "I don't care how we precisely assign blame, I'm just going to say you all caused it and move on". In other words, it's Microsoft's fault and it's CrowdStrike's fault.

[0] ancaps fite me

[1] Maximally connected social graph with node degree below Dunbar's number.

[supriyo-biswas]

> because they want people to irrationally hate antitrust

One only needs to look at what's happening with Google's privacy sandbox to know the perils of antitrust with regard to introducing new interfaces. Even though Google has offered new interfaces and APIs that they themselves intend to migrate to (and take a ~20% revenue reduction), they've attracted the scrutiny of regulators who claim that this is a way of locking out competitors in the advertising space.

> [0] ancaps fite me

This part is simply inciting a flamewar, and something that you can do without in the spirit of the website guidelines[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[kmeisthax]

It's important to remember that every other browser dropped third-party cookie support years before Chrome did. Google dragged their feet on it until they could come up with a solution that would give Google the same level of tracking, because Google is an advertising company. So the competition authorities are telling Google - and only Google - that they can't drop third-party cookies anymore.

I've never actually heard anyone claim Privacy Sandbox[0] APIs would give third-party ad networks the same level of tracking as Google. But I imagine even if they did, the APIs would probably be a poor fit for competing ad networks, in the same way that, say, the iOS File Provider APIs are a terrible fit for Dropbox[1].

There are three different ways you can introduce a new standard or interface:

- You can go to or form a standards body with all the relevant market players and agree on a technical specification for that interface. This is preferred, and it's how the Web is usually done.

- You can take a competitor's interface people are already using and adopt that. This is how you get de-facto standards, and while they might have loads of technical problems[2], none of them give you an unfair market advantage.

- You can make your own interface and force competitors to adopt that. You get all the technical problems of a de-facto standard, but those are all problems your competition has to deal with, not you.

The difference is a matter of market advantage. Out of all the major browser vendors, only Google has dominance in online marketing. Microsoft and Apple would like to have a piece of that pie, but they all dropped third-party cookies without tying it to their own competing standards that they wanted to force other people to use.

[0] Hell of an Orwellian name

[1] For example, if you use Dropbox as your file storage, you can't pick folders. At all. On an operating system built by the company whose engineers are obsessed with bundles (directories that look and act like files instead of folders).

[2] laughs in SWF