One of those two companies also makes the OS, the other one piggybacks on it. So it seems updates to Defender XDR would be less likely to brick the OS like this.

I've never worked for Microsoft so I'm speculating, but I doubt their org structure supports that. The Windows team isn't going to be the same as the EDR team.

The EDR team might have more info about Windows internals than CrowdStrike does, but then again, maybe not; CrowdStrike already has to work pretty closely with Microsoft to get into the kernel in the first place, and Microsoft is (sometimes) pretty careful about 'bundling' antitrust concerns.

I think the feeling is that Microsoft as the company that has to field the blame for any problems in Windows has more incentive structures in place internally to "never further tarnish the Windows brand". CrowdStrike doesn't care if people blame Windows (and partially benefited in some parts of this news cycle from people blaming Windows for being the messenger), but Microsoft has nothing but skin in that game, and even if the team was in a terribly remote part of the org structure from the Windows team would still be incentivized to avoid making Windows (any more) the bad brand even if for no other reason than "shareholder value" and the equity stakes in their total compensation. (But Microsoft will have other internal incentives in place, especially the closer the team gets to Windows.)

> until eBPF for Windows is done

Red Hat says CrowdStrike themselves have sent out eBPF files that have caused all sorts of kernel panics. Any sufficiently advanced kernel scripting language is still kernel-level code. I'm not sure eBPF is exactly the savior people are hoping for, though I do still think it remains something of a general improvement if Microsoft can actually get AV vendors and others to use eBPF rather than bespoke kernel drivers.

I'm pretty sure those were actual kernel modules, not eBPF. eBPF for their Linux agent is on their roadmap but not something they are actually doing yet. eBPF should be sandboxed and unable to crash the kernel. Could be I'm missing something, though.

The price is no joke. Microsoft has a lot of really good security products locked behind a paywall that security vendors know they can beat. We were looking the price for sentinel the other day and holy shit it’s costly.

There should be a law that you can’t offer security at a premium. It’s too important.

Paying less to reduce security is a baffling business model.