2961: CrowdStrike

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CrowdStrike

Title text: We were going to try swordfighting, but all my compiling is on hold.

Explanation

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This comic is about the 2024 CrowdStrike incident occurring on the day of the comic's release. CrowdStrike makes security software to protect computers from malware, ransomware and other cyberattacks. The software is sold to businesses and large enterprises like hospitals, airlines and retailers. CrowdStrike frequently releases updates to their software to handle new types of malware they know about. A faulty update for one of their software products, which was apparently released without adequate testing or quality assurance, caused computers with the software installed to crash (a Blue Screen of Death) very early on when booting up. This meant the computers could not be quickly or automatically fixed. Because many large businesses with large numbers of computers used CrowdStrike's software on at least some of their systems, or relied upon businesses that did, the resulting disruption was very widespread and very visible, preventing those businesses from operating and, in many cases, preventing their employees from working while their computers were affected.

Apparently, Cueball and Ponytail's company, or possibly a company providing a service their work depends on, uses CrowdStrike to secure their computers (although they may just be using it as an excuse to slack off, if their colleagues don't know any better). Without being able to work, they have found something more entertaining to do -- Cueball, riding a scooter and with a rope tied around his waist, is towing Ponytail, who is sitting on a swiveling chair, around their office or neighborhood. Performing this activity is probably a bad idea.^{[citation needed]}

As the caption suggests, not everyone has the luxury of slacking off while their computers are broken. CrowdStrike engineers had to address the faulty update, and help the businesses using their software to fix their computers. And relevant employees at affected customers' IT departments had to work to mitigate the impacts, and to roll out the necessary fixes. In the event, CrowdStrike had released a patch for the software around six hours after it came to light, but this had to be manually applied to each affected device.

The title text refers to 303: Compiling, in which Cueball also found an alternative way to spend time at work when 'forced' to step away from his computer, albeit for a less disruptive reason. But, because of this problem, even the compiling is on hold. If sword fighting is 'officially allowed' only during actual compiling, as that comic implied, then during this instance (forced to be AFK for different reasons) they must resort to yet other activities, such as the one in this comic.

Transcript

[White Hat is pointing his finger at Ponytail and Cueball. Ponytail is crouched on a moving office chair, holding with both hands onto a rope tied around the waist of Cueball, who is riding an electric scooter.]

White Hat: Hey, aren't you supposed to be working on the—

Ponytail: Sorry, that's all on hold today because of the CrowdStrike thing.

[Caption below the panel:]

Protip: As long as you're not actually in charge of fixing the CrowdStrike thing, you can use this excuse for pretty much anything you want to do today.

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Discussion

how will this impact the status of vs sonic.exe rerun 172.70.90.177 18:25, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Somewhat bemused that there's a comic for this on Day 0, yet there was no comic about the xzutils backdoor earlier this year… 162.158.49.19 20:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

How do you know there wasn't a secret comic about the xzutils problem, set up well before any impact became obvious? ;) 172.69.43.185 21:09, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Right now, reading this explanation, this is the first I've ever heard anyone mention "crowdstrike" at all. - 141.101.109.193 08:19, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Some early reports called it "cloudstrike" which certainly reminds us of our vulnerable positions as providers of truth. Look up “We built this city on sausage rolls.” 172.68.70.122 13:33, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Seriously, this comic came out yesterday, the same day as the thing happened? How did Randall do that, seriously??? Mathmannix (talk) 14:51, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like a good start of a conspiracy theory. But wouldn't it have been ironic if he tried to publish it, and the service provider for explainxkcd.com was down because of Crowdstrike? Barmar (talk) 00:11, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

That's not irony, that's coincidence. 162.158.212.173 03:24, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

he's been drawing stick figures for years, probably really easy for him. youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 05:53, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Is there an English Dialact in which the Titletext is pronounced resembling a Haiku? 172.70.250.183 (talk) 11:04, 21 July 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Fully enunciated, it's 18 syllables. Whilst "going to" can easily be reduced to "gonna", it still makes it hard to split nicely intoto three phrases of 5/7/5 'on'/syllables.

The "...is on hold" is the clincher, at just three and no obvious way to self-bulk to five (requiring other bits to merge further down). Awkward to donate part of "compiling" (three on its own, hard to reduce to two without slurring). I suppose a strategic ellision might help draw it in.

The two immediate options I would give are therefore:

• "We were going to / try swordfighting, but all my / compiling on hold." (meh)
• "We were gonna try / swordfighting, but all my comp... / ...iling is on hold." (...a bit of non-verbal onomatopoeia invoked? Might be considered even the more poetic for it)

Or rewrite, for explicit nod to the haiku:

• "From our office chairs / neither compile nor swordfight / at this time of pause." (usefully, for the form, "time of" becomes a poetically better seasonal reference)

In fact I was at one point going to add to my latest exit to the Explanation that, based just upon this and Compiling, it seems that 'office-sanctioned idling' must involve the ubiquetous office-chair (which, BTW, surely deserves a Category:Office Chair... if someone cares to create it, there being any number of appearances being sat/kneeled/stood upon) to be allowable. But maybe wait for a third demonstrative example to be posted/remembered. Maybe if I go and manually look for all Office Chair Category candidates I'll stumble across just such an example that I'd forgotten... But later. 172.69.43.226 11:50, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Did the image change? Now it just says "crap" over and over again. Vaden K. (talk) 05:24, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Some vandal did it. I fixed it a while ago. —megan [[user talk:megan|talk]contribs 07:51, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Return of the Crapper? Oh dear. P?sych??otic?pot??at???o (talk) 14:41, 22 July 2024 (UTC)