Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to lock down Windows

Re:Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to l... by colmmacc on Sunday July 21, 2024 @10:02PM (#41030232)

I'm beyond skeptical that this competition regulation prevents Microsoft from say ... having Windows roll back to the last known version of a driver/extension after a failed boot (or several). Or from having a hyper-minimal super-nanny API that uses a signed network call to add a level of control over the loading process. Or from having a built-in phased rollout API that only permits a rollout to increase in scope as more confidence is gained. And probably ten more ideas! Microsoft didn't trigger this outage, but it's very worrying if they disown it. There's a lot the OS vendor can do.

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Re:Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to l... by jborean93 on Sunday July 21, 2024 @11:15PM (#41030613)

> having Windows roll back to the last known version of a driver/extension after a failed boot (or several)

One of the problems with CrowdStrike was the update was a definition/config file that was pushed out by CrowdStrike. There was no driver update and the BSOD was caused by the existing driver failing to parse/load the new file pushed out. This means there was no last known good state to rollback to in terms of driver updates.

Granted I still agree that MS can hopefully improve things to avoid this problem in the future but this isn't a simple problem that the OS can guard from short of stopping 3rd party kernel drivers.

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Re:Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to l... by colmmacc on Sunday July 21, 2024 @11:46PM (#41030758)

For robust rollback you need an encapsulation of the full dependency closure that can be rolled forwards and backwards atomically. These days containers are a decent enough solution for that. Anything changes means everything changes, at the same time. We have the technology.

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Re:Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to l... by perryizgr8 on Monday July 22, 2024 @12:21AM (#41030915)

> This means there was no last known good state to rollback to in terms of driver updates.

Windows should unload the misbehaving driver after a couple of failed boots.

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Re:Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to l... by jborean93 on Monday July 22, 2024 @12:23AM (#41030925)

Sure I can agree with this (if it's actually viable to do). My reply was mostly to try and explain that the issue wasn't due to a driver update but rather an existing driver failing to work with a new file it was using hence why the last known good configuration feature didn't work.

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Re:Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to l... by TiredOfLife on Monday July 22, 2024 @02:15AM (#41031362)

So all a virus has to do is cause the driver to crash.

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Re:Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to l... by perryizgr8 on Monday July 22, 2024 @06:55AM (#41032974)

If a virus has infiltrated the system to such an extent that it can crash a kernel mode driver then it's already game over.

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Re:Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to l... by throwaway4pp24 on Tuesday July 23, 2024 @06:22AM (#41044489)

I really don't think so. Crashing the system is still a long way from controlling the system - no implication there.

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Re:Microsoft points finger at the EU for not being able to l... by M95D on Monday July 22, 2024 @05:36AM (#41032452)

Remember the Windows safe mode? Remember F8 step-by-step confirmation for config.sys, autoexec.bat and .vxd drivers?

Why does it have to be automatic?

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