This was not caused by a cyber attack, instead a
flawed software update from the cybersecurity company Crowdstrike, which then
knocked down systems operating on Microsoft.
And as Wilson Walker shows us, it all highlights the
vulnerabilities of our tech infrastructure.
It's got a ping pong playing robot, for example, if
you want to beat the varsity team, table tennis playing
robots.
One of the more fun elements of Professor Shankar Sastry's
lab at UC Berkeley.
Of course, the big topic of conversation here today?
The very not fun consequences of the crowd strike update
that affected everything from airlines to healthcare systems.
And what struck me is, you know, how how brittle
it, how brittle our systems were because in the broader
scheme of things, we ought to have been able to
isolate and to some extent even compartmentalize the damage.
But the damage really, you know, spread across the world.
He says mistakes do happen and that is the reason
for sandboxing or testing software in a contained environment, especially
something used on this scale but having a misconfiguration which
has not been caught.
It was really mind boggling to me.
Didn't you apply that upgrade on any ventilation before sending
it to all around the world?
Cal State East Bay Professor Levente are tall, equally surprised.
Yes, Sir.
Yeah.
And then there's a wow factor.
OK, So this shows us that how our computing systems
right now is of today in the world, interconnected and
complex.
And it is vulnerable.
That's very important.
It is vulnerable to a mistake.
It's a vulnerability embedded in the very systems we depend
on and often take for granted until they fail, and
that is our lives.
Unfortunately, we will see these things more in the future
because things are getting more complex and things are getting
more interconnected.
The the number of incidents will go up.
The severity of the incident is really what we need
to think about.
Sastry says.
Today's crash is a sign that we have prioritized speed
and convenience at the expense of resilience.
And that may need to change, you know, but this
really was on on that scale, truly a wake up
call for US1 airport that did not have a lot
of chaos.
Today was Oakland.
Why is that?
Well, the presence of Southwest Airlines, which had no computer
troubles today at all.
So how you fared?
And all this really came down to what type of
software some business was using.
A new kind of unpredictability in all of our lives
until the very next little bit of bad code comes
along.
Oh no, no bad code.
Wilson.
Nice breaking it down for us.
Thank you.
Crowd.
Strike provides cyber security software that is used all over
the world by companies, government agencies and many other organizations.
All told, the Austin, TX based company has said that
it has 29,000 subscribing customers.
The company has partnerships with both Amazon and Microsoft.
Earlier today, Crowd Strike CEO apologized for the mistake, saying
that the company takes responsibility.