(Image Credit: april_kim/Pixabay)
“Don’t fix what isn’t broken” is a big motto in the design world. I always love stories of old technology still doing its job, and well. This is one of those cases.
Last week, the world experienced a major IT outage that impacted airlines, hospitals, banks, supermarkets, and millions of businesses. This occurred after cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike rolled out an update on supported Microsoft platforms. However, the outage didn’t affect Southwest Airlines since its systems run on Windows 3.1.
Some believe Windows 3.1 is the reason why Southwest Airlines flew sky-high during the outage. The company remained operational primarily because it doesn’t use CrowdStrike’s security software --- the source of the problem. After all, many of its systems run on Windows 95 and 3.1, which are too outdated to support modern security updates, including the ones from CrowdStrike.
CrowdStrike’s update file was corrupted, which mainly affected Windows servers and caused the Blue Screen of Death. Database types, like MSSQL, could be impacted if they ran the CrowdStrike software while the update was being installed. The problem surfaced due to a logic error related to the C-00000291*.sys file that crashed affected systems.
Southwest Airlines has faced repercussions for running on outdated systems during the December 2022 major meltdown that caused 16,900 flight cancellations. That operational failure left two million passengers stranded and led to a $140 million civil penalty enforced by the US Department of Transportation (DOT).
Microsoft said the problem has been fixed. A day after the outage, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote, “Yesterday, CrowdStrike released an update that began impacting IT systems globally. We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.”
Who here still has Windows 3.1/3.11 on floppy disk somewhere? I do!
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