Microsoft says last week’s worldwide outage of Windows PCs was due to the European Commission preventing it from securing its systems in the same way Apple does. Microsoft also says it’s something that users need to get used to.
A widespread system failure last week hit Windows computers around the globe, causing critical boot failures across computers in several industries, closing airports, shutting down hospitals, and taking television stations off the air. The issue caused Windows computers to boot into a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), forcing users into repeated recovery cycles.
The issue was caused by a flawed update to Crowdstrike Falcon antivirus software installed on Windows 10 PCs. The issue did not affect Mac and Linux machines running the software.
Although CrowdStrike’s chief executive took responsibility for the problem Friday, Microsoft has now told the Wall Street Journal that the faulty update’s calamitous impact should be laid at the feet of the European Commission, as the EC doesn’t allow Microsoft to secure its systems as Apple does.
A Microsoft spokesman said it cannot legally wall off its operating system in the same way Apple does because of an understanding it reached with the European Commission following a complaint. In 2009, Microsoft agreed it would give makers of security software the same level of access to Windows that Microsoft gets.
Microsoft reportedly agreed with the EC in 2009 that it would provide the same access to Windows security developers that it allows for its own teams. Therefore, CrowdStrike was able to push out an update without Microsoft necessarily even knowing about it.
In other words, Microsoft is saying that it cannot and will not do anything to prevent another incident like this in the future.
While Apple in 2020 told security developers that they would no longer have kernel access for their software, Microsoft security developers still have this type of access to Windows.
