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Ahmed Al Sharif has worked in software engineering and consumer electronics for decades.
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The CTO found himself caught up in the travel chaos caused by the outage in early July 19.
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He said CrowdStrike broke a cardinal rule for developers, and the fallout was eye-opening.
This essay, as told, is based on a transcribed conversation with Ahmed Al Sharif, 32, the technical director of Sandsoft, a game developer. Al Sharif was stranded at Barcelona airport on Friday, July 19, due to the computer outage that is disrupting travel and other services. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I started my career in the technology industry almost twenty years ago as a software engineer. I was a founder of a startup and worked for large companies like EA and Meta.
On Friday, July 19, I was due to fly from Barcelona International Airport to London Heathrow for business at 11am local time.
I was surprised to arrive and find that flights were grounded. I was also surprised to learn that there had been serious malfunctions on several Windows systems at the airport. It took a little digging to discover that this was a global event.
Even as an engineer, I found it strange to witness this outage. I didn’t think there was such a dependency on a single third-party software that, if it irresponsibly forced an update, would cause so much damage.
I realized the computer outage was happening after I arrived in the chaos at the airport
I left for the airport at 8am. Before arriving, there were a few warning signs that something was wrong.
I couldn’t log into my online banking app and things were a little slow when logging into my Outlook email, but I attributed that to my hotel’s Wi-Fi.
When I arrived at the airport around 8:20, it was crowded. The lines were endless. Several check-in counters had blue screens and no one was checking in. I realized that something more serious was happening.
I didn’t understand where to queue, and when I asked an airport advisor, they told me that there was no point in queuing now because there was a problem with the ticketing, booking and reservation systems.
I asked if our airport was the only one affected, and they told me it was happening everywhere.
That’s when I started googling furiously. I realized that the problem was with CrowdStrike and that it was happening on a global scale.
Disruptions at the airport continued throughout the day
During the day, baggage drop-off machines, vending machines and most of the airport’s display boards were not working.
Check-ins were done manually. Before I received a handwritten paper ticket, I had to prove that I had booked a flight for that day by showing the staff my emails as proof of payment. Anyone with checked luggage had to bring it to the gate, and airport staff would toss it into the hold by hand.
My own flight was delayed by six hours and I am still at the airport as I speak. It is annoying and inconvenient, but fortunately the airline is covering my travel and understands that the situation is out of my control.
I’ve talked to people who have waited 11 hours at the airport. People seem pretty frustrated.
I was surprised to learn of CrowdStrike’s dominance on Microsoft devices
During my delay, I tried to understand the situation better. It is quite intriguing and shows how much we have taken for granted how interconnected our world is and how dependent we are.
I was surprised to learn that the cascading failures were caused by a CrowdStrike update released early Friday morning.
CrowdStrike is well known in the cybersecurity industry, but until today, I don’t think anyone was aware of its dominance as a platform on Windows. It never occurred to me that a third-party solution could cause so much damage to Windows machines.
One of the cardinal rules of software development is that it is generally not advisable to apply a patch later in the week or on Friday. You will have less support to try to fix the problems and the weekend will be wasted.
It feels like some cardinal rules were broken. However, CrowdStrike may have evidence to suggest this was a freak accident, so I don’t think it’s fair to point fingers too much.
I’ve heard comments about this situation about diversification and companies not being reliant on just one or two suppliers. I don’t think that’s realistic.
Windows is a commonly used operating system. In any free market economy, the best performing and most suitable product will dominate the market.
We need to look at and understand more rigorously the tools that we use for critical infrastructure. The impact has been enormous, because it has affected infrastructure like airports, train stations and hospitals. It is going to cost the economy dearly.
If there had been more due diligence or even government regulation, I don’t think this would have happened.
I expect that after this, government authorities will expect widely used platforms like CrowdStrike to warn them before proposing changes like this.
Technology will shape our future, so we need to think about how we regulate it
We have yet to fully see the impact this outage will have, and it certainly gives us perspective on how the small devices we keep in our pockets dictate the pace of our lives.
I don’t think anyone really understood the true scope and presence of CrowdStrike until today.
I still think our future will be increasingly automated. There will probably be many more situations like this, especially as our society moves toward more automation. I still think technology is a good thing, but it makes me want to mail my invoices every now and then.
It usually takes an event like this to learn lessons. I don’t think technology is inherently good or bad; it depends on how it is used and regulated.
Read the original article on Business Insider
