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Windows 3.1 saves the day during CrowdStrike outage — Southwest Airlines scrapes by with archaic OS (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 5 months ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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.

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[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 5 months ago

That makes fuckall sense.

Windows 3.1 not being updated by Microsoft has nothing to do with Crowdstrike rolling out an update to their Falcon Sensor software including a file with 42kB of zeroes.

On Windows 3.1 you probably can't run Falcon Sensor, so in that way it could be related. But it seems way more likely that Southwest Airlines simply didn't use Falcon Sensor on their normal Windows 10 or whatever clients.

There are probably competitors to Crowdstrike, at least some companies would be customers to one of them.