this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Maybe this is a case of hindsight being 20/20 but wouldn't they have caught this if they tried pushing the file to a test machine first?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's not hindsight, it's common sense. It's gross negligence on CS's part 100%

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Well, it is hindsight 20/20... But also, it's a lesson many people have already learned. There's a reason people use canary deployments lol. Learning from other people's failures is important. So I agree, they should've seen the possibility.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I saw one rumor where they uploaded a gibberish file for some reason. In another, there was a Windows update that shipped just before they uploaded their well-tested update. The first is easy to avoid with a checksum. The second...I'm not sure...maybe only allow the installation if the windows update versions match (checksum again) :D

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Windows has beta channels for their updates

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

It's a sequence of problems that lead to this:

  • The kernel driver should have parsed the update, or at a minimum it should have validated a signature, before trying to load it.
  • There should not have been a mechanism to bypass Microsoft's certification.
  • Microsoft should never have certified and signed a kernel driver that loads code without any kind signature verification, probably not at all.

Many people say Microsoft are not at fault here, but I believe they share the blame, they are responsible when they actually certify the kernel drivers that get shipped to customers.