this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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Honestly kind of excited for the company blogs to start spitting out their ~~disaster recovery~~ crisis management stories.
I mean - this is just a giant test of ~~disaster recovery~~ crisis management plans. And while there are absolutely real-world consequences to this, the fix almost seems scriptable.
If a company uses IPMI (~~Called~~ Branded AMT and sometimes vPro by Intel), and their network is intact/the devices are on their network, they ought to be able to remotely address this.
But that’s obviously predicated on them having already deployed/configured the tools.
Anyone who starts DR operations due to this did 0 research into the issue. For those running into the news here...
CrowdStrike Blue Screen solution
CrowdStrike blue screen of death error occurred after an update. The CrowdStrike team recommends that you follow these methods to fix the error and restore your Windows computer to normal usage.
No need to roll full backups... As they'll likely try to update again anyway and bsod again. Caching servers are a bitch...
I think we’re defining disaster differently. This is a disaster. It’s just not one that necessitates restoring from backup.
Disaster recovery is about the plan(s), not necessarily specific actions. I would hope that companies recognize rerolling the server from backup isn’t the only option for every possible problem.
I imagine CrowdStrike pulled the update, but that would be a nightmare of epic dumbness if organizations got trapped in a loop.
I've not read a single DR document that says "research potential options". DR stuff tends to go into play AFTER you've done the research that states the system is unrecoverable. You shouldn't be rolling DR plans here in this case at all as it's recoverable.
I also would imagine that they'd test updates before rolling them out. But we're here... I honestly don't know though. None of the systems under my control use it.
Right, "research potential options" is usually part of Crysis Management, which should precede any application of the DR procedures.
But there's a wide range for the scope of those procedures, they might go from switching to secondary servers to a full rebuild from data backups on tape. In some cases they might be the best option even if the system is easily recoverable (eg: if the DR procedure is faster than the recovery options).
Just the 'figuring out what the hell is going on' phase can take several hours, if you can get the DR system up in less than that it's certainly a good idea to roll it out. And if it turns out that you can fix the main system with a couple of lines of code that's great, but noone should be getting chastised for switching the DR system on to keep the business going while the main machines are borked.
That’s a really astute observation - I threw out disaster recovery when I probably ought to have used crisis management instead. Imprecise on my part.
The other commenter on this pointed out that I should have said crisis management rather than disaster recovery, and they’re right - and so were you, but I wasn’t thinking about that this morning.
Nah, it's fair enough. I'm not trying to start an argument about any of this. But ya gotta talk in terms that the insurance people talk in (because that's what your c-suite understand it in). If you say DR... and didn't actually DR... That can cause some auditing problems later. I unfortunately (or fortunately... I dunno) hold the C-suite position in a few companies. DR is a nasty word. Just like "security incident" is a VERY nasty phrase.
Note this is easy enough to do if systems are booting or you dealing with a handful, but if you have hundreds of poorly managed systems, discard and do again.
Yeah I can only imagine trying to walk someone through an offsite system that got bitlocked because you need to get into safe-mode. reimage from scratch might just be a faster process. Assuming that your infrastructure is setup to do it automatically through network.
Nah... just boot into safemode > cmd prompt: CD C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike
Then: del C-00000291*.sys
Exit/reboot.
The stuff I copied into the end of my comment is direct from CrowdStrike,.
Hm.. yeah what I provided worked for us.
IPMI is not AMT. AMT/vPro is closed protocol, right? Also people are disabling AMT, because of listed risks, which is too bad; but it's easier than properly firewalling it.
Better to just say "it lets you bring up the console remotely without windows running, so machines can be fixed by people who don't have to come into the office".
Ah, you’re right. A poor turn of phrase.
I meant to say that intel brands their IPMI tools as AMT or vPro. (And completely sidestepped mentioning the numerous issues with AMT, because, well, that’s probably a novel at this point.)
I'm here right now just to watch it unfold in real time. Unfortunately Reddit is looking juicer on that front.
https://libreddit.northboot.xyz
On desktops, nobody does. Servers, yes, all the time.
Depends on your management solutions. Intel vPro can allow remote access like that on desktops & laptops even if they’re on WiFi and in some cases cellular. It’s gotta be provisioned first though.
Yeah, and no company in my experience bothers provisioning it. The cost of configuring and maintaining it exceeds the cost of handling failure events, even on large scales like this.
VPro is massively a desktop feature. Servers have proper IPMI/iDrac with more features, and VPro fills (part of) that management gap for desktops. It's pretty cool it's not spoiled or disabled. Time to reburn all the desktops in east-07? VPro will be the way.