Crowdstruck

 Woke this fine, sunny morning to hear of a worldwide IT outage. Many hospitals and health services, airlines, hotels and other time-critical organisations were unable to work normally. I checked my GP's online presence and the NHS app was unable to retrieve any information from them.

Initial reports identified this as a Windows issue but it rapidly became clear it was caused by a botched update from a software supplier called Crowdstrike. They provide anti-hacking solutions. Must admit I've never heard of them but today, for all the wrong reasons, they are a household name.

Exasperated IT professionals vented their anger on the Reddit r/sysadmin forum, making two key points. Updates should not be rolled out on a Friday, and, crucially, asking whether Crowdstrike bothered to test the update, seeing how readily it has prevented Windows based systems from working. Any test would, it seems, have shown that the update was defective.

Surely the cause was not our old friend getting out of his depth....

Scene. Update Control room at Crowdstrike. Although the company is based in Austin, Texas, this is in England (just go with it, ok). A group of seasoned coders, analysts and hacking experts are crowded round a screen. Enter a fresh-faced, eager young intern.

Taz (for it is he): Gosh, guys, what's up?
Rodney: That's the code for our latest update. We're just scrolling through it and admiring the beautiful structure. See that little recursive call there? That's one of George's finest
George: Too kind, Rodders, too kind.
Rodney: And here, these curly brackets enclosing square brackets enclosing another set of curly brackets with two extra quote marks round the text string? Take a bow, Amanda
Amanda: Only up all night polishing that little lot, that's all
Taz: It's amazing stuff, really. Only Customer Services have asked me to find out when the update is going to be released. Early next week, right?
Amanda: As far as I am concerned, it's finished.
Rodney: Yup, just put a full stop after the last rem and I'm done. George?
George: I think I'll just put in a Do until x=2, x=x+1 Loop. Give the punters good measure. All done, old boy.
Amanda: Lovely work, George.
Rodney: Right, I'll just copy it to this flash drive and we can call it a day. There's a bar stool down at the Red Lion with my name on it. Might catch a bit of the Test Match. Tell you what, young feller, you can help us out. Take this and do the usual, alright?
Taz: Er, the usual...
George: That's the spirit. We'll make a programmer of you yet. Let's go, people.

They exit.

Taz: Umm...I suppose they want me to take this straight back and get it out there, get all those computers round the world updated as quick as possible. Yes, that must be it. I can tell them in Customer Services that everything has finished here so it must be ready to go. Brilliant, everyone will be happy that it is going out so fast and on a Friday too, they can rest easy over the weekend...