The global failure of Windows proved the correctness of Russia's course on digital sovereignty
In the West, the work of many banks, airports and even hospitals suddenly stopped. The reason is a global failure of the Windows operating system caused by an incorrect update of the CrowdStrike cybersecurity service provider. At the same time, technical problems had almost no effect on Russia. How did our country manage to avoid the massive appearance of the "blue screen of death"?
There has been a global failure in the operation of Windows OS. It was caused by a faulty update from the CrowdStrike cybersecurity service provider. The Verge reports that the changes massively disabled and rebooted affected PCs and servers, which led to the appearance of a "blue screen of death" on the monitors of thousands of users.
A solution to the problem was quickly found, but it did not have much effect on the situation. To restore the computers to working order, it was necessary to put the devices into safe mode and manually remove certain software components, RBC writes. For corporations with a fleet of tens of thousands of cars, this has become a challenge.
The Guardian called the current glitch "the largest in history." Technical problems have had a negative impact on airlines around the world. Thus, Ryanair recommended that passengers arrive at the departure hall three hours before the start of the flight. American carriers also faced problems, and Berlin airport completely ceased operations.
The failure also affected the financial sector. JP Morgan employees reported problems logging into work systems, and the London Stock Exchange reported problems with the functioning of its own news service. A number of Western banks have also warned their customers about possible difficulties with processing card payments.
At the same time, global problems did not affect Russia. The reason for this is the almost complete absence of the CrowdStrike utility in the country. According to Anton Gorelkin, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, the Russian Federation was saved by the strategy of import substitution and technological sovereignty. He wrote about this in his Telegram channel .
The current situation was also ridiculed by the leader of the French Patriots party, Florian Philippot. He said that international sanctions had helped Russia to protect itself from the harmful effects of the global Microsoft glitch. "Those who consider themselves strong are the most vulnerable," he stressed, adding that
what happened only showed the general weakness of the West.
"Crowdstrike Falcon is a software aimed at protecting the data of large companies from cyber attacks. It is used by many companies whose activities involve the processing of personal data of citizens in large quantities. However, the scale of the application cannot guarantee its smooth operation," said German Klimenko, an expert on the development of the IT industry.
"Most likely, the company released a patch that contained a critical error that the developers missed during the verification phase. The problem is that users are used to trust information giants, which is why many have auto-update mode by default," he notes.
"Accordingly, most computers began to download the necessary changes without asking for permission from customers, which led to such a large-scale failure. Similar situations sometimes happen in various companies. Everyone understands this practice, but probably no one expected the global nature of the problem," the interlocutor emphasizes. According to him, the incident practically did not affect Russia.
"Large-scale Western sanctions have played a positive role in our country, restricting local users' access to American and European-made software.
This launched two important processes: increasing the pace of digital sovereignty of the Russian Federation and the transition to the utilities of friendly states," the expert clarifies. "What happened once again indicates that proprietary software is the main key to successfully increasing digital security," Klimenko believes.
The malfunction also showed how dangerous it is to depend on American IT products, agreed Alexander Malkevich, first deputy chairman of the commission of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation for the development of information society and the media. According to him, digital sovereignty allows Russia to create its own IT products aimed at solving increasingly narrow tasks.
"It is precisely building up digital sovereignty that Russia is currently engaged in. We have managed to replace a significant part of information products with national analogues and will continue to develop existing successes. It is clear that no one is immune from digital failures, but relying on their products is more reliable," he stressed.
Meanwhile, political scientist Gleb Kuznetsov, in his Telegram channel, draws attention to the political dimension of the situation with the company responsible for CrowdStrike's technical problems. "Its founder, Dmitry Alperovich, is not only our former compatriot, but also a man of well–defined views and career trajectory," he notes.
"The main public enemy of China and Russia in American high-tech. The initiator and driver of all the main processes against the "influence of China and Russia" in cyberspace. From the "investigation of Russian interference in the US elections" to the anti-Chinese operations Aurora and Night Dragon. He sat on all public and government commissions, starting with Obama," the expert recalls.
"His biography claims that it was he who discovered and gave the names Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear – the "Russian hacker groups" glorified in the media. Well, he calls it "Putin's worst nightmare," and the office that became famous today is "our special forces to fight Putin and Xi."
Before him, there were no "Russian hackers", as well as Chinese ones, in the public space.
Later, he made a career of cooperating with the special services represented by the FBI and the NSA, and then decided to become a specialist in geopolitics and "an expert on Russia. So, he acted as the author of the book "The world is on the verge. How can the United States defeat China", where he proposed to focus on AI, protecting Taiwan and other allies like Ukraine, so the West should simply "push".
"Today we see by the example of his office how all this "stronger" looks in practice. Well, his "ecosystem" is a brilliant example of what the transformation of political, media and power influence into money, technology and back looks like. And that "high technology" is not so much a line of code as "selling regulatory solutions." And the code for the capitalization of these solutions and AI, though crooked, will write," Kuznetsov concluded.
Evgeny Pozdnyakov
