A computer scientist’s take on the CrowdStrike crash

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On July 19, millions of Windows users encountered the dreaded “blue screen of death.” A bug in a critical piece of cybersecurity software, called CrowdStrike, was causing the operating system to crash. For some people and companies, the issue is ongoing, and costs are projected to be in the billions.There’s little we can do to protect against bugs in the software we’re using, says Zakir Durumeric, who is an assistant professor of computer science.  “In general though, one of the best things that people can do to protect themselves against attacks is to regularly update their computers and phones.” He shares his insights on the outage.1. In simple terms, what happened?The outage that started July 19 was caused by a malformed update that was sent to a piece of security software called “CrowdStrike Falcon.” While CrowdStrike may not be a household name, it is a major enterprise security company that builds what we call Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) software. EDR is the enterprise successor to antivirus – it’s software that continuously runs on every workstation within a company and monitors for abnormal behavior that might indicate the computer has been infected (e.g., with ransomware). EDR is ubiquitous and is thought by many folks in the security industry to be one of the best tools for protecting users’ computers against attacks.The update that was sent to CrowdStrike software on Friday was malformed, which caused the software to crash every time it started and tried to parse the update. Now, usually, when an application like Google Chrome or Microsoft Word crashes, only that one application crashes. However, a lot of security software – including CrowdStrike Falcon – is special in this regard. Because CrowdStrike needs to detect malicious activity on the whole computer, it runs as part of the Windows operating system instead of on top of it. Unfortunately, this also meant that when it crashed, it caused the Windows OS to also crash.  Zakir Durumeric | Courtesy Zakir Durumeric2. Why was the impact so significant – and why is it taking so long to resolve?The fix to get CrowdStrike and Windows running again is simple – one just needs to delete the malformed file that was shipped as part of the update. Unfortunately, however, because the Windows operating system crashes every time it boots, this cannot be done remotely or in any automated fashion. Instead, IT staff need to manually boot Windows machines into a troubleshooting “Safe Mode” to delete the problematic update. Further complicating fixes, when computers use BitLocker Full Disk Encryption, which is strongly recommended, IT staff additionally need the associated BitLocker recovery keys to apply the fix, which some organizations are realizing they don’t have recorded or accessible. 3. What happened with air travel?Many organizations use CrowdStrike EDR software to protect their Windows workstations and servers, including airlines. As a result, the computers for some airlines, most notably Delta, no longer booted starting Friday. Delta has noted that upwards of half of their systems run Windows and that their crew scheduling system, in particular, was heavily impacted. We don’t yet know why it’s taken Delta longer than other organizations to get these systems back online; the U.S. Department of Transportation has opened an investigation into Delta over the issue. 4. Are there any lessons we can learn from the outage?This incident serves as a stark reminder of just how reliant we have become on incredibly complex software systems and the large number of dependencies that each system has. While we’re getting better at software development as a field, we are still a long way from being able to guarantee that complex systems won’t have bugs like this. Critical Infrastructure providers need to be thinking about how they’re architecting their systems to be resilient against system failures and how they’re going to recover when a system does fail, because this undoubtedly won’t be the last time we see a bug like this.

Eerie moment scientists found wreck of ship that mysteriously disappeared 55 years ago

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Scientists have unearthed the wreckage of a ship that mysteriously vanished 55 years ago.Take a look at the eerie footage below:MV Noongah was the name of the 233ft freighter that got lost at sea in 1969 with 26 crew members on board.The vessel that was departing from Newcastle to Townsville, Australia, was carrying steel off the coast of New South Wales when it was hit with stormy weather.Causing one of the most prominent maritime search missions in Australian history, almost all of the crew, along the ship, were never seen again. Only one body was ever recovered.However, after the Royal Australian Navy deployed helicopters, planes and rescue boats, two more men were found at sea in two separate life rafts, and three others were reportedly clinging to a plank of wood.The shipwreck has finally been found. (CSIRO) Its location has remained a mystery – until now.After all these years, Australia’s science agency used high resolution seafloor mapping to locate the wreck, enabling them to capture footage of the moment it was found.Though this discovery has been years in the making after locals first spotted a wreck a number of years ago, about 286 miles north of Sydney.The issue was that the technology needed to identify the ship was not available, but thanks to the ship owned by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the wreckage was found.The state-of-the-art ship was able to confirm the dimensions of the wreck and it matched up perfectly.The MV Noongah was largely in tact. (CSIRO)As shown in the incredible footage above, the vessel was still largely in tact and was sitting upright on the sea floor.CSIRO Voyage Manager, Margot Hind, said: “We were lucky to have favourable sea conditions for the survey and our CSIRO technical teams were able to gather excellent bathymetry and drop camera vision of the wreck.“The bathymetry data shows the wreck is sitting at a depth of 170 metres and is approximately 71 metres long, with the vessel dimensions, profile and configuration matching MV Noongah.”“This tragedy is still very much in the memory of many in the community,” CSIRO’s Matt Kimber said.“We hope that knowing the resting place of the vessel brings some closure for all.”Mr Tim Smith OAM, Director Assessments from Heritage NSW, added: “We hope this discovery of the ship’s final resting place offers the survivors and families of the crew some closure.”“It’s always been in the back of my mind,” Pamela Hendy, the widow of captain Leo Botsman, said.

NASA scientist warns about ‘real risk of asteroid’ with potentially ‘huge consequences’ if it hits Earth

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Many millions of years ago the dominant creatures on the planet were going about their normal lives of eating, sleeping, fighting and f**king when a big asteroid came down and kablamo! Life on Earth was irrevocably changed.When that one came down, it wiped out about three quarters of all plant and animal life on this rock.Now we’re the dominant creatures on this planet, but the possibility that a chunk of rock hurtling through space might come crashing down and spell doom for us all is still very present.Space hasn’t run out of asteroids that may come our way, though we’d have more advance warning than the dinosaurs.We’ve got all sorts of instruments and gizmos to plot the paths of asteroids so we can spot them coming and plan accordingly.That plan would first figure out how much time we had to respond, as we could have years or even decades to mount a response.If an asteroid was heading for Earth what could we do about it? (Getty Stock Photo)In that case, the asteroid could well be deflected off-course, but if it’s going to hit within five years it’ll have to be destroyed.We’ve already practiced this on other asteroids not headed for our planet so if our warning system pings up a problem, it’s something we might be able to handle.It’s better than the dinosaurs – at least they didn’t even have spaceships and satellites.One of the planet’s greatest asteroid experts is planetary scientist Dante Lauretta, the leader of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return mission which successfully landed on an asteroid called Bennu and collected samples which it dropped off back on Earth.Speaking to Inverse, he said that the chances of us being struck by an asteroid weren’t high, but it was something we’d need to think about.”I am not having a good day.” (Getty Stock Photo)He said: “The risk of an asteroid impact is real. It’s small. But the consequences are huge.”We live our lives with our heads down with all our daily struggles. But every once in a while, you look up, and you go, you know, there could be something coming, and maybe we should think about it.”He also said that we had new facilities to spot asteroids, though lamented the closure of some places like the Arecibo radar system in Puerto Rico, which was damaged by a hurricane and is not currently being rebuilt.Lauretta said that learning about asteroids and the ‘unbelievably powerful’ forces in the universe means ‘you can’t help but feel tiny’, but that doesn’t make the wonders of space any less of an ‘amazing place to explore’.

India lost its vultures, and scientists say humans have paid the price

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New Delhi — Scientists say Indian farmers’ eager uptake of a painkiller for their cattle in the 1990s has led to the inadvertent deaths of half of a million people and massive economic losses — not from any harm to the cattle, but from the loss of millions of vultures, scavengers that historically devoured animals’ remains before they could rot and become vectors for disease.In early 1990s, the patent on a painkiller called diclofenac lifted, making it cheap and widely available for India’s massive agricultural sector. Farmers use it to treat a wide array of conditions in cattle. But even a small amount of the drug is fatal to vultures. Since the beginning of its widespread use in India, the domestic vulture population has dropped from a whopping 50 million to just a few thousand — and according to a study published by the American Economic Association, the impact on humans has been monumental, reflecting the vital role the scavengers play.Vultures have been a crucial part of India’s ecosystems for centuries. According to the authors of the study, entitled “The Social Costs of Keystone Species Collapse: Evidence From The Decline of Vultures in India,” the large, homely birds are a “keystone species” — one that plays an irreplaceable role in an ecosystem. 

They’re the only scavengers that feed entirely on carcasses, and they do it extremely efficiently, quickly devouring the remains and leaving little behind to spread disease. The study authors say India’s vultures would typically eat at least 50 million animal carcasses every year, before their population was decimated.

A vulture feeds on a buffalo carcass at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam, India, in a March 3, 2024 file photo.

Anuwar Hazarika/NurPhoto/Getty

In doing so, they prevented the dead farm animals from rotting, and the deadly bacteria and other pathogens that thrive in carcasses from being transmitted into human populations.

“In a country like India with prohibitions on eating beef, most cattle end up turning into carcasses,” Anant Sudarshan, an associate professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England, who co-authored the study, told CBS News. “Vultures provide an incredible disposal service for free. … A group of vultures takes about 45 minutes to turn a cow carcass into bone.”The vultures’ keen appetite also helped keep the populations of competing scavengers in check, such as feral dogs and rats, which can transmit rabies and a host of other diseases.In 1994, farmers began giving diclofenac to their cattle and other livestock. The drug causes kidney failure and death in vultures that feed on the carcasses of animals given the painkiller, and the population of the birds shrank from 50 million to just 20,000 over the course of the ensuing decade alone.Without the vultures around to do the job, farmers started disposing their dead livestock in local bodies of water, which caused water pollution — and another way for pathogens to reach humans.

A file photo shows vultures eating an animal carcass in India.

Amit Pasricha/INDIAPICTURE/Universal Images Group/Getty

Sudarshan and study co-author Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, examined the impact of the drastically reduced vulture population on human health by mapping vulture habitats with health data from more than 600 districts in India. They said their research shows 100,000 human deaths every year between 2000 and 2005 could be linked with the decreased vulture populations. 

It also shows economic losses they estimated at $69 billion per year, largely associated with premature human deaths due to the collapse of the scavenger population.These deaths were caused, according to their research, by the spread of diseases that a thriving vulture population would have mitigated. Stray dog populations, and with them, the spread of rabies, also increased during the timeframe, as did the amount of bacteria measured in many local water sources.”India is now the largest center of rabies in the world, as the feral dog population has grown dramatically,” Sudarshan told CBS News.

A young man fishes in the Jhelum river in Sopore, Jammu and Kashmir, India, June 12, 2024, as feral dogs watch from the bank. 

Nasir Kachroo/NurPhoto/Getty

Without a major vulture rebound, the study authors said the spread of disease and resulting deaths will only continue in the coming years, as will the costs associated with health care.India did ban diclofenac for veterinary use in 2006, but Sudarshan said the ban needs to be enforced much more effectively. He and Eyal have called for more conservation funding to boost vulture populations, but they’ve warned that even if the Indian government does mount a major effort, it will take at least a decade for the species to bounce back to the extent required because they’re “slow reproducers.” As an alternative to bringing the vultures back, Sudarshan said India could build a network of incinerators around the country, but the estimated cost of that is about $1 billion per year, and they would use a huge amount of energy and create considerable air pollution, which is already a major problem for India. “So, it makes more sense to bring back the natural way of dealing with the millions of animal carcasses that India produces each year,” he said.

And he said that work must start urgently, as the “vultures began dying in the 1990s. India has not done anything three decades on.”

A vulture is seen next to the carcass of sheep at the Zojila Pass in India, in a June 7, 2022 file photo.

Faisal Khan/Anadolu Agency/Getty

The government does spend about $3 million per year to save India’s native tigers. Sudarshan said while vultures may be far less of a tourist attraction, there’s a broader question about “the basis of our conservation policy.””Our paper shows that the cost of losing them [vultures] is about $69 billion a year, which is far higher than any benefits the tiger” brings, he said, adding: “We need to think from a cost effectiveness point of view and growth view, how should we pick species to conserve?””Understanding the role vultures play in human health underscores the importance of protecting wildlife – and not just the cute and cuddly,” said his co-author, Frank. “They all have a job to do in our ecosystems that impacts our lives.”

India lost its vultures, and scientists say humans have paid the price

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New Delhi — Scientists say Indian farmers’ eager uptake of a painkiller for their cattle in the 1990s has led to the inadvertent deaths of half of a million people and massive economic losses — not from any harm to the cattle, but from the loss of millions of vultures, scavengers that historically devoured animals’ remains before they could rot and become vectors for disease.In early 1990s, the patent on a painkiller called diclofenac lifted, making it cheap and widely available for India’s massive agricultural sector. Farmers use it to treat a wide array of conditions in cattle. But even a small amount of the drug is fatal to vultures. Since the beginning of its widespread use in India, the domestic vulture population has dropped from a whopping 50 million to just a few thousand — and according to a study published by the American Economic Association, the impact on humans has been monumental, reflecting the vital role the scavengers play.Vultures have been a crucial part of India’s ecosystems for centuries. According to the authors of the study, entitled “The Social Costs of Keystone Species Collapse: Evidence From The Decline of Vultures in India,” the large, homely birds are a “keystone species” — one that plays an irreplaceable role in an ecosystem. 

They’re the only scavengers that feed entirely on carcasses, and they do it extremely efficiently, quickly devouring the remains and leaving little behind to spread disease. The study authors say India’s vultures would typically eat at least 50 million animal carcasses every year, before their population was decimated.

A vulture feeds on a buffalo carcass at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam, India, in a March 3, 2024 file photo.

Anuwar Hazarika/NurPhoto/Getty

In doing so, they prevented the dead farm animals from rotting, and the deadly bacteria and other pathogens that thrive in carcasses from being transmitted into human populations.

“In a country like India with prohibitions on eating beef, most cattle end up turning into carcasses,” Anant Sudarshan, an associate professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England, who co-authored the study, told CBS News. “Vultures provide an incredible disposal service for free. … A group of vultures takes about 45 minutes to turn a cow carcass into bone.”The vultures’ keen appetite also helped keep the populations of competing scavengers in check, such as feral dogs and rats, which can transmit rabies and a host of other diseases.In 1994, farmers began giving diclofenac to their cattle and other livestock. The drug causes kidney failure and death in vultures that feed on the carcasses of animals given the painkiller, and the population of the birds shrank from 50 million to just 20,000 over the course of the ensuing decade alone.Without the vultures around to do the job, farmers started disposing their dead livestock in local bodies of water, which caused water pollution — and another way for pathogens to reach humans.

A file photo shows vultures eating an animal carcass in India.

Amit Pasricha/INDIAPICTURE/Universal Images Group/Getty

Sudarshan and study co-author Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, examined the impact of the drastically reduced vulture population on human health by mapping vulture habitats with health data from more than 600 districts in India. They said their research shows 100,000 human deaths every year between 2000 and 2005 could be linked with the decreased vulture populations. 

It also shows economic losses they estimated at $69 billion per year, largely associated with premature human deaths due to the collapse of the scavenger population.These deaths were caused, according to their research, by the spread of diseases that a thriving vulture population would have mitigated. Stray dog populations, and with them, the spread of rabies, also increased during the timeframe, as did the amount of bacteria measured in many local water sources.”India is now the largest center of rabies in the world, as the feral dog population has grown dramatically,” Sudarshan told CBS News.

A young man fishes in the Jhelum river in Sopore, Jammu and Kashmir, India, June 12, 2024, as feral dogs watch from the bank. 

Nasir Kachroo/NurPhoto/Getty

Without a major vulture rebound, the study authors said the spread of disease and resulting deaths will only continue in the coming years, as will the costs associated with health care.India did ban diclofenac for veterinary use in 2006, but Sudarshan said the ban needs to be enforced much more effectively. He and Eyal have called for more conservation funding to boost vulture populations, but they’ve warned that even if the Indian government does mount a major effort, it will take at least a decade for the species to bounce back to the extent required because they’re “slow reproducers.” As an alternative to bringing the vultures back, Sudarshan said India could build a network of incinerators around the country, but the estimated cost of that is about $1 billion per year, and they would use a huge amount of energy and create considerable air pollution, which is already a major problem for India. “So, it makes more sense to bring back the natural way of dealing with the millions of animal carcasses that India produces each year,” he said.

And he said that work must start urgently, as the “vultures began dying in the 1990s. India has not done anything three decades on.”

A vulture is seen next to the carcass of sheep at the Zojila Pass in India, in a June 7, 2022 file photo.

Faisal Khan/Anadolu Agency/Getty

The government does spend about $3 million per year to save India’s native tigers. Sudarshan said while vultures may be far less of a tourist attraction, there’s a broader question about “the basis of our conservation policy.””Our paper shows that the cost of losing them [vultures] is about $69 billion a year, which is far higher than any benefits the tiger” brings, he said, adding: “We need to think from a cost effectiveness point of view and growth view, how should we pick species to conserve?””Understanding the role vultures play in human health underscores the importance of protecting wildlife – and not just the cute and cuddly,” said his co-author, Frank. “They all have a job to do in our ecosystems that impacts our lives.”