Global IT Outage

I've flown when the IT systems have failed, and they'll do paper and pencil boarding procedures. Everything will be massively delayed.
Paper and pencil check-in it was indeed :knitting:

I got into a chat with the lady at the check-in desk and she said they hadnā€™t even been trained in any manual processes for years. She joined after training in manual passenger processing had already been withdrawn so the staff had to figure everything out on the spot. I can only imagine what a nightmare day it is for them, dealing with an unfamiliar processes and stressed out passengers at the same time. She also said that someone at her training course for this job asked the trainer what they were supposed to do if the system went down and the answer was that the system never goes down, itā€™s absolutely impossible so there was no point even discussing it. And yet here we are. I guess no one told that guy to ā€œnever say neverā€:lol:

On a different note, some reports say that the affected Windows machines may have to be fixed manually one by one, so thatā€™s going to be fun.
 
She also said that someone at her training course for this job asked the trainer what they were supposed to do if the system went down and the answer was that the system never goes down, itā€™s absolutely impossible so there was no point even discussing it. And yet here we are. I guess no one told that guy to ā€œnever say neverā€:lol:
Don't you just love the eternal optimists? When I first read this, this morning, my first thought was "testing the waters". Russia needs to brace itself for taking the blame as usual. The world has put all its eggs in the technological basket and now it is payment time.
 
Donā€™t overlook the possibility this is part of the cosmic earth changes mentioned by the Cā€™s. Electrical systems are ultimately tied to the earth which is in a fluxing electro-magnetic-gravitic environment which is part of a larger solar system. Not all systems and system components are created equal. The more sophisticated a system is, and the narrower itā€™s optimal parameters, the more prone it is to breakdown.

IOW, donā€™t rule out random physical/cosmic chaos.
 
Ditto! I hope your flight is safe and uneventful.

A cyber pandemic is an interesting idea - it would certainly cause chaos and disrupt.. Well everything. With all of the cyber attacks being piled on Russia's doorstep, perhaps they would be the proclaimed source.
I wish you safe travels also @Ant22 . Let us know when you make it safely to your destination (and what the situation is like there).
 
According to the official narrative, it was CrowdStrike the one to blame.

One has to ask the question, why would a cybersecurity firm patch Windows directly? Should not be done by Microsoft?

CrowdStrike is a US defense contractor, what other ā€œpatchesā€ could they be deploying onto Windows, perhaps backdoors?
 
Working within the devsecop corporate ecosystem it is pretty interesting to see how this unfolded. This event sure has highlighted and reminded many that cloud and/or hybrid systems are not anti-fragile. However, instead of taking a step back and reflect, many underrate the risks related to the dependencies to these systems, and just pushed for further systems implementations (add your favorite stuff as AI, ML, ...). wishfull thinking/hubris seems to pretty much blindside if the thought of more control can fix everything ~ but I guess the agenda has been set and will not deviate. My 2 cents.

Related to this issue at least one of the learning has been how easy it was to bring critical system down with 1 single point of failure. Guess my incomming weeks will be interesting.

Crowdstrike is used mainly as EDR / security and these are enforced to most cloud system/instances: AWS, Azure, ... and impacted therefore all windows based servers. As a side note, all client under group policy enforcing the standard corporate IT security SOP have also been impacted at least from the reports I got.
 
Most applications in our company were down for a while and many peoples' machines were still down with blue screen. That is risk with this "magical" cloud auto upgrades is this. Entire corporate business community was very hesitant during 2010-2015 period for switching to cloud. When the competitors who are on the cloud started eating to their market foot print, every body has to jump in. Those companies that can withstand the pressure, were lured into it with cheap storage.
 
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