Southwest Airlines, the fourth largest airline in the US, is seemingly unaffected by the problematic CrowdStrike update that caused millions of computers to BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) because it used Windows 3.1. The CrowdStrike issue disrupted operations globally after a faulty update caused newer computers to freeze and stop working, with many prominent institutions, including airports and almost all US airlines, including United, Delta, and American Airlines, needing to stop flights.
Windows 3.1, launched in 1992, is likely not getting any updates. So, when CrowdStrike pushed the faulty update to all its customers, Southwest wasn’t affected (because it didn’t receive an update to begin with).
The airlines affected by the CrowdStrike update had to ground their fleets because many of their background systems refused to operate. These systems could include pilot and fleet scheduling, maintenance records, ticketing, etc. Thankfully, the lousy update did not affect aircraft systems, ensuring that everything airborne remained safe and were always in control of their pilots.
Or, for your consideration, could it perhaps be because they don’t use crowdstrike?
My Linux servers weren’t affected either. I think it’s because of Windows 3.1
I feel like every article out there is missing this and keeps blaming Windows Update vs an update pushed to a specific piece of software by a third-party developer. I get end-users not understanding how things work but tech writers should be more knowledgeable about the subject they write about for a living.
Yeah what a badly written article, with awful takeaways.
Best feature windows 3.1 has:
… it doesn’t pop up message telling you to upgrade to windows 11.
Shhh don’t give microsoft any ideas
Windows 3.1 didn’t have the BSOD. It just froze. I remember with Windows NT 4, when we first got the BSOD, being so grateful that Microsoft decided to actually tell us that our computer wasn’t going to recover from the error. Otherwise, we’d just be sitting there, waiting, hoping it would unfreeze itself.
It never did
Windows 3.1 did have a BSOD. It wasn’t always fatal, you could try to hit enter to go back to Windows, but most of the time it wasn’t really recoverable, Windows often wouldn’t work right afterwards.
I ran into them all the time in 3.11 on our 486 which had some faulty RAM (the BSOD would even be scrambled). If we could get back to Windows after that, it’d just be in a zombie state where moving the mouse around would paint stuff over whatever was left on screen, and wouldn’t respond to clicks or keypresses.
Fun times.
😄it still do that on my over 20y old 2gig RAM Arch KDE on wayland macBookPro 🤔
Windows 3.1 absolutely did have a BSoD, and as the other person mentioned, sometimes you could press a key and the OS would recover. More often than not you needed to reboot, though. Our family PC would BSoD all the damn time, and I had to put up with it throughout a good portion of my early childhood until my dad finally bought a Windows 98 SE PC. But that OS also had its fair share of instability issues. The “illegal operation” error message was a near-daily occurance.
It wasn’t until we got our first NT-based machine (XP) that we stopped having constant issues with Windows. The DOS-based Windows OSes were notoriously unstable.
The fact that they’re running 3.1 is not something to be proud of. They’re probably extremely vulnerable to any other attack.
Quite the opposite.
Please explain. I’ll make 🍿
Microsoft’s Wolverine for the TCP stack was not available until Windows 3.11. An argument could be made that these systems are defacto air-gapped as they cannot communicate with modern networking.
Youre assuming the article is using “windows 3.1” to mean the exact version of the OS, instead of just the proper name of the OS overall. That probally unlikley.
Since lacking a network stack tends to limit usability, unless the systems are intentionally air gapped they likely are on windows 3.1.1 or later. Based on Southwest extensively documented and decades long IT neglect that landed its current COO in front of Congress for a previous days long outage, i doubt the systems are intentionally airgapped, as that implies a working and well funded IT department.
Just because it doesn’t have TCP/IP doesn’t mean there isn’t networking. Networks existed before the Internet and its Internet Protocol after all. It wouldn’t be so much air gapped as so archaic that only the most targeted attacks would work, and only if there is an infected PC acting as an intermediate between the Internet and ye olde network. Chances are it was never connected to the modern Internet as the technologies just aren’t compatible.
Old doesn’t mean secure. Those old systems have had decades since the last security patch. Even then computer security was barely a consideration for the developers.
I am not saying it is, normally old systems are the least secure. The bit you’re not getting is that this system is almost certainly air gapped, just not by choice. It can’t work with modern networks. It can’t work with modern viruses. Any exploit a modern hacker would think to use probably doesn’t exist yet. It’s a bit like trying to break someone’s car by putting sugar in the fuel, except they ride a horse. Do you get it yet?
This is the “can’t get a Word Document macro virus because I use the Corel WordPerfect Document type” kind of energy.
No, it doesn’t, because Corel didn’t buy WordPerfect until 1996.
Edit: man, y’all really don’t understand either jokes or the linear progression of time.
I miss our Corel word perfect :(
It still exists. You can use it
I’m inclined to believe this post, claiming this article is BS https://mastodon.social/@jplebreton/112825798853315264
Yes, the update bricked the systems, meaning the software that powers their business was unaccessible, reinstalling any version of windows would not restore the software built on top of the os. Thus why it became a huge ordeal rather than a simple update push from Microsoft, a bricked system can’t receive a fix remotely.
So…Battlestar Galactica scenario?
I love such things in Star Wars too.
And not sure whether there’s been a plot play with the Katana fleet (all ships were slaved to the flagship, all crews including that of the flagship caught a virus causing them to go mad and die, and while they were still alive, the fleet jumped in unknown direction ; it was found later and ships reused by sides of the civil war) where its obsolete electronics and software were actually an advantage security-wise.
Though in that universe it seems that interfacing and integrating wildly different systems is more or less a normal thing, since there are lots of planets, lots of races and some things still in operation are few centuries old.
lol
Maybe don’t pay a company to install a rootkit on your critical infrastructure?
Hang on, if you’re using CrowdStrike but not getting the updates, then why are you using it at all?
And they can play JezzBall.
I thought everyone already switched to 3.11
Windows 3.1? You fancy kids, and your modern operating systems! What’s wrong with Windows 1.0???
In before OS/2
inb4 os/5
This software is shit Bob! What should we do Bob?
Well Bob, we should find something compatible with shit!
Bob, I think I got it! I got this other shit software!
Genius Bob! Just Genius! 😎
🤯
Ahhhh, the Technology Trap. The modern world has become a mere handful of bad zeros away from having this house of cards crash down and kill almost everyone.
Technology is great and makes our modern society comfy and great. But it also can be the Sword of Damocles. When will that slender thread break and kill us all?
