We heard a story that after the recent hurricane, a man noted that while the house was sweltering hot because the power was still out, his kids were more anxious for the internet to come back online. The Internet is practically a basic necessity for most people, but as you may have noticed with the recent CrowdStrike debacle, the Internet isn’t always reliable. Granted, the problem in that case wasn’t the Internet per se, but a problem with many critical hosts that provide services. [Thomas Germain] from the BBC took the opportunity to recall some of the more bizarre reasons we’ve had massive Internet outages in the past.
While teens after a hurricane might miss social media, global outages can be serious business. With 8.5 million computers dead, 911 services went down, medical surgeries were canceled, and — of course — around 46,000 flights were canceled in a single day. We have short memories for these outages, but as [Thomas] points out, this was far from the first massive outage, and many of them have very strange backstories.
How strange? Well, apparently, all of Armenia’s Internet depends on a single fiber optic cable. A 75-year-old woman in Georgia (the country, not the US state) sliced it with a spade while hunting for copper and took down the entire country. A few years later, a tractor in South Africa took out the Internet all across Zimbabwe. If those aren’t strange enough, sharks like to bite undersea cables, as you can see in the video below.
As the Internet becomes more entrenched in necessary services, we are surprised that there are not more requirements for dissimilar redundancy like those on a spacecraft or nuclear power plant. Even preventing third parties from pushing updates directly into production servers might have helped in this case. High-end data centers often have multiple network access points with different carriers. They also have generators or other means to deal with power outages. None of this helps, of course, if you depend on a group of servers that all get the same software updates and the update goes bad.
We don’t know why sharks hate undersea cables. We love them. If you want more specifics on the CrowdStrike event, our [Jonathan Bennett] has been following it for you.
Perhaps he’s flossing.
(Chuckle!)
I thought it was just being an opportunist; “Maybe this is food?”
As far as I remember sharks are electroreceptive and use this for locating prey. I wonder if current in the cable twigged this sense and made it give it a nibble to see if it really was food.
But, but, do undersea fiber optic cables have wires?
I am aware of shark electroreceptivity.
Yes…for amplifier power
I guess it would be magneto receptivity. Unless some current would somehow pass trough the water, but this would mean the conductor is interrupted or at least the isolator
Sharks bite _everything_. It’s their main way of interacting with the world. If they find something interesting, they’ll gently bite it because their mouth is the most sensitive part of their body.
Sharks in curiosity mode are apparently pretty easy to get along with; you just need to make sure to push them away if they try to take a bite or of you, because you don’t want them to realise that inside that rubbery layer of neoprene is something edible…
Nah, it was laser-beam jealousy:
“If I can’t have a laser, nobody can!” – quote from anonymous shark with something suspiciously similar to an undersea fiber-optic cable dangling from its mouth
The recent CrowdStrike debacle doesn’t really seem to be an ‘internet outage’. Sure, some services that chose to build infrastructure on Windows went down (which really isn’t surprising at all[1]). Was there really wide spread network connectivity/service issues caused by CrowdStrike?
[1] Ok, a little bit of a surprise they all went down at once, but still not a big surprise for Windows machines.
From regular user perspective there isn’t really much difference between “internet is down” and “significant service is down”. Few years ago we had Facebook outage and people were sure that there is no internet at all.
While you are correct, I feel HaD isn’t really a site that caters to the low common denominator user (i.e. people who think internet == facebook). Or maybe it is, I guess next up we will start saying 1Kb is only 1000bytes? :)
yes I remember getting an “email” from someone claiming the internet is down because they couldn’t reach facebook
Well since it’s now a “utility” (and a “human right”, thanks UN) maybe it’ll have something to aspire to.
I remember working for EarthLink back in the day, people would call up and say their Netscape was down.
They were testing a new feature
The Crowdstrike incident is a prime example of what you get when security engineers run the show instead of software engineers.
Just absolutely classic mindset that their change needs to go out everywhere, all at once, ASAP – concern for consequences to the wind.
Apart from basic testing (did anyone even try deploying this on *one* Windows machine?!) … Who thought it was a good idea to deploy to millions of machines at once, instead of a staggered rollout with some basic validations that it’s… Working.
Security is important. I lock the door to my house to keep undesirables out, allow my family in, and have use of a house.
A security engineer welds the door shut, or burns the house down, says “no baddies can get in that house!” and wipes their hands of the situation.
I’ve never understood why some software engineers have animosity towards Security Engineers, but I keep running into it…
I too would love to read the internal postmortem from Crowdstrike and really understand how on earth they managed that screw up. But seems a bit off to blame Security Engineers without reading it.
Also, that last sentence leaving me thinking that you don’t understand what a Security Engineer role really involves. Hint, Security Engineers are there because “baddies can get in that house”. Anybody who thinks “no baddies can get in” is an outcome has no clue about security.
Just wait till you see how cloud engineers are…respected.
“Sure, some services that chose to build infrastructure on Windows went down (which really isn’t surprising at all”
What DID surprise me is that ClownStroke took down bunches of Linux servers on two prior occasions, and at least one of them has strong similarities with the latest debacle with Windows machines. Yup, ClownStroke also managed to bork Rocky Linux servers and Debian servers.
After those two incidents, you’d think they would have gotten their poop in a group and NOT engineered yet another fiasco by failing to test properly.
Exactly. The crowd strike is a Windows blue screen of death issue, not an internet issue.
> Granted, the problem in that case wasn’t the Internet per se, but a problem with many critical hosts that provide services.
I’m also concerned about Internet outrages!
B^)
Let’s not forget the 1988 Morris worm. Like Cloudstrike, it disabled a lot of individual machines.
I like that cloudstrike’s name is synonymous with its failure now. It does sound like the names they come up with for exploits and viruses. Strange branding for a cybersec company
Eh. Some of us go “camping” or, even, spend “family time” without the internet. Relying on a thing, any single thing, to be able to go about your daily business is crazy to me but what the heck. I was born just on the other side of the digital revolution.
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Ironically I’m a physician that regularly practices in developing nations and this type of thing would have zero impact on healthcare there. But here in good ol USA it’s a show stopper.
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Turns out diligence and a clipboard and you’re pretty much good for the (digital) apocalypse.
Well, “developing nations” probably don’t have the huge amount of electronic “paperwork” required by insurance companies and the state and federal governments. Crashed computers and lost Internet access will certainly impact health care in the USA.
save it in “the cloud” they said.
it will be safer they said.
always available they said….
That Shark thought biting the cable would make it acess Social Media and Internet, of course
Sharks, especially larger sharks, make it a habit to bite or headbutt anything that gives off strange EM fields. Don’t know if this really applies to the cables in question (someone mentioned wires for amplifiers?) but this is why we can’t manage to keep great whites in aquariums thus far. They’ll brain themselves on the sides of the tanks or just get generally confused and stop eating. Doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem for the small species, like dog sharks, though.
Squirrels are the #1 threat to the internet. https://cybersquirrel1.com/