(ConservativeJournal.org) – A major networking error was initiated after an update to anti-virus software caused many computers and networks around the world to crash simultaneously on July 19. The Falcon antivirus program is put out by the firm CrowdStrike and runs on Windows computers. A flaw in the update caused the infamous blue screen of death across banking, transportation, and retail hubs that used the software to secure their machines.
Thankfully the error was fixable, despite difficulties, but the situation betrays a simple fact that over-reliance on technology and networked systems not only can cause massive disruptions, but that they inevitably will.
An interesting complication with this problem was that some of the computers that suffered the flaw and couldn’t boot were the ones required to access to fix the problem. Added layers of security, designed to prevent unauthorized network intrusions, also complicate the matter when those passwords are infrequently used and stored on other machines potentially impacted by the bug.
Here the problem was triggered by a simple update and the solution required individual attention to each affected machine by knowledgeable and experienced network administrators. The problem demonstrates the issue with centralization of networks: the larger and more vital the network, the more devastating the eventual crash.
Many authorities are pushing for the expansion of digital currencies to replace cash, or nationalized identification networks, if either of those became ubiquitous a crash like this could prevent purchases on a grand scale bringing economic activity to a halt. CrowdStrike’s error only caused a problem for 8.5 million machines in ~24,000 organizations.
The potential for abuse is also quite real; Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau froze bank accounts of protesters who spouted rhetoric he didn’t approve of. American spooks coerced social media companies to censor posts that revealed true, but inconvenient facts for the elites regarding the experimental injections of 2021 and Hunter Biden’s laptop shortly before the 2020 election.
Large networks will always be targets for collapse or control by accident, intentional disruption, or good old fashion authoritarianism. Having multiple redundant and distinct systems will prevent collapse or hijacking of any one of them from being catastrophic. Was the lesson learned?
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