IGEL Weekly: How to recover Blue screened Windows endpoints to IGEL OS

IGEL helps companies to quickly recover, whenever productive work comes to a halt due to an IT outage.

IGEL offers a secure read-only lightweight Linux Operating System allowing you to convert existing PC’s to IGEL OS or boot from USB (thus not affecting the existing Operating System or data) whilst in a Disaster Recovery situation, allowing users to connect to services such as VDI, DaaS and\or WEB and SaaS applications.

In a DR scenario IGEL OS will work without the need for management infrastructure to be setup and configured, simply boot to IGEL OS, download evaluation licenses for 90 days; install any client applications you require to connect to your VDI, DaaS and\or WEB and SaaS applications and get your users back up and running FAST.

This may also have the advantage of granting the IT team breathing space whilst they continue to troubleshoot any ongoing outages.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Chris Feeney

Transcript

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Andy Whiteside: Hello, everyone! Welcome to Episode 97 of Igel Weekly. I'm your host for this one, Andy Whiteside, hopefully. Well, not hopefully. I know Barry Brown and his team are doing some of the community versions of this. But this is our more corporate version. Where we talk about the you know the blogs that Igel puts out, and we've got a we've got a very hot topic for today that Chris Feeney, who's with me here, is gonna help me cover and we can go super deep, or we can go super wide, or we can do a little above Chris. How's it going.

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Chris Feeney: Going. Well, Andy, it's always a pleasure to get with you, and

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Chris Feeney: what a time to be alive. I mean.

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Chris Feeney: it's an interesting world we live in some of those things we'll talk about today. We've been talking about for quite a while, anyway. So it's not necessarily new, but it's new from a different angle that I don't think any of us ever thought

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Chris Feeney: would happen. But but yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: Well, you know what, Chris, it it happens all the time, and here's what I mean. It happens to the common user all day every day. Here's the blog is from July 19th is from Andy Prior, I think, must be on on the igl team somewhere or somewhere in the ecosystem, and the title of this blog is, Don't use windows unless you have to use windows. Microsoft Windows. Oh, wait a minute. That's not the title. The title is how to recover blue screens, windows, endpoints using the Igeos. Chris.

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Andy Whiteside: I know we're gonna talk about the thing that happened. And we're gonna talk about your vacation, and we're gonna talk about airline madness associated with the crowd. Strike security patch that went out roughly. 5 or 6 days ago. But Chris, true or false.

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Andy Whiteside: for the last

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Andy Whiteside: 3 or 4 years, however long you've been at eye. Gel, you have gone to airports and seen blue screens of death at Airport, commonly.

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Chris Feeney: Definitely, not every time, but definitely I've seen them. Yes.

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Andy Whiteside: So this thing we're gonna talk about today has been happening for a long time. And people have just been okay with it until

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Andy Whiteside: it happened bad enough

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Andy Whiteside: where it's now caused issues, and people are upset about it right now.

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Andy Whiteside: But they'll forget about it in 3 months.

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Andy Whiteside: and we'll be back to business as usual. Don't forget about it in 2 weeks.

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Andy Whiteside: Business as usual.

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Andy Whiteside: but it's going to happen again. It's like

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Andy Whiteside: pandemics

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Andy Whiteside: once in a lifetime, I hope. But viruses are common every every winter all throughout the year, even blue screens of death happen all the time. It's just we mitigate the impact hopefully.

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Andy Whiteside: This time we did.

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Chris Feeney: And well, I learned a thing about how this.

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Chris Feeney: how blue screen actually occurs. Research that

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Chris Feeney: coming back from vacation as I was seeing it happen, play out, live and and into the weekend. But

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Chris Feeney: but yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: Tell us about. Tell us about that, because a lot of people see blue screens

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Andy Whiteside: and they don't associate it with what's really happening.

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Andy Whiteside: You tell. Tell us what happens when you see a blue screen on a windows computer.

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Chris Feeney: So it really kinda understand. It's an understanding of how an operating system works. Right? So there are. You know, there's

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Chris Feeney: OS itself, and then the OS. Has a kernel

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Chris Feeney: which interoperates with the hardware.

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Chris Feeney: Igel is a Linux OS. We have a kernel that interoperates with the hardware. Then you have 3rd party applications that can run on the OS. And, generally speaking.

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Chris Feeney: those 3rd party apps should not have kernel access.

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Chris Feeney: and in the case of a blue screen.

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Chris Feeney: It's windows responding to something

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Chris Feeney: that is occurring in a kernel driver or system driver. Those require elevated privileges. And it's basically saying.

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Chris Feeney: and I, generally speaking, my, my general understanding is it was trying to call a place in memory. Yeah, reserve for this.

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Chris Feeney: you know, special privileged area and windows was like Nope, and it does what it does as a protective mechanism.

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Andy Whiteside: It's the. It's the old TV show from the sixties and same seventies. Danger, will Robertson. Danger, Will Robertson? Here's a blue screen. Stop

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Andy Whiteside: right.

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Chris Feeney: And if it's if it's not a kernel driver, then you basically the the operating system will kill the process cause it doesn't have that system. Level kernel driver sort of scenario.

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Andy Whiteside: It will.

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Chris Feeney: And.

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Andy Whiteside: Driver as software, whether it's driving hardware, whether it's software application running in this cases, maybe maybe secure security related things. And within the operating system, and and hopefully, not in the kernel. The kernel is very important and very protected. The the way I describe a kernel to someone who knows anything about biology. It's like the hypothalamus of the human being.

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Chris Feeney: Yeah.

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Chris Feeney: And if you need to know what that is, go back to 7th grade biology and read up, just do a Google search on hypothalamus. But the point is.

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Chris Feeney: the kernel is, I mean, that's sort of the foundational piece. That's the that's the stuff

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Chris Feeney: your apple iphone, your your

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Chris Feeney: you know Google Android. You know, they all have a kernel, and that interoperates with the hardware that you're running on. And that's that's

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Chris Feeney: that's just how an OS works.

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Andy Whiteside: Hey? Real quick! What is the kernel of windows? 11.

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Andy Whiteside: Cold.

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Chris Feeney: Oh, man!

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Andy Whiteside: Easy.

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Andy Whiteside: It's it's windows in T. It's the same thing that's been around since the 90 S.

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Andy Whiteside: Multi-user kernel windows. Nt versus windows. 95 and windows 98. What was the kernel for that?

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Chris Feeney: Oh, it was! Dang it! I know it cause antique was the the

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Chris Feeney: that's what.

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Andy Whiteside: Dogs. It was dogs!

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Chris Feeney: Us. You didn't miss us. Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: Good.

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Chris Feeney: 32 bit

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Chris Feeney: didn't I mean.

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Andy Whiteside: Original. What's the original name of the Dallas operating system?

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Andy Whiteside: Toss.

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Chris Feeney: So s. 2.

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Andy Whiteside: No toss.

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Chris Feeney: Toss, interesting.

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Andy Whiteside: You know T. Stood for.

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Chris Feeney: No.

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Andy Whiteside: Trash

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Andy Whiteside: trash operating system.

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Andy Whiteside: long story there, but nonetheless dos which Microsoft got from, I think, Xerox

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Andy Whiteside: and helped Ibm with something

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Andy Whiteside: anyway. Long story there. But my, the point is the kernel. We gotta protect the kernel. Gotta protect the kernel. Our kernels today in the mainstream are 2. Linux is a kernel

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Andy Whiteside: and when and windows Nt. Is a kernel, nt. Is a kernel. Those are the 2 kernels in the x 86 world. Normally.

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Chris Feeney: Right? Yeah.

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Chris Feeney: So what's interesting here is is obviously what was unique about

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Chris Feeney: this particular situation with Crowdstrike. And

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Chris Feeney: it's it's obviously a very well known company. Lots of customers

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Chris Feeney: protecting a very well entrenched operating system out there in the world.

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Chris Feeney: From the things we talk about.

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Chris Feeney: lot of these ransomware and what ransomware tries to do. And

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Chris Feeney: you know, gain kernel, access or hardware. And so this this particular software has special privileges.

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Andy Whiteside: Can we talk about that super quick? Because you kind of you're gonna want to cover here.

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Andy Whiteside: Windows is my favorite operating system. Microsoft windows is my favorite operating system. It's what I built my career on. It's super super

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Andy Whiteside: by default.

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Andy Whiteside: coded to be unbelievably malleable and powerful.

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Andy Whiteside: which is what allows it to do so many great things.

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Andy Whiteside: It's also what allows so many people to do me so many bad things.

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Chris Feeney: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

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Chris Feeney: And we've talked about this before.

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Chris Feeney: you know.

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Chris Feeney: Well, I I went on, Igel's been doing OS stuff for 20. Some odd years Linux has been around for just over 30. So

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Chris Feeney: but it was

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Chris Feeney: design from the ground up

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Chris Feeney: from a security perspective to a minimalist approach and a read only scenario that you could manage the devices as well from a from a scaling perspective. So just a a different approach to

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Chris Feeney: an OS.

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Chris Feeney: That was

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Chris Feeney: built for a specific purpose, you know. Accessing remote

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Chris Feeney: S.

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Chris Feeney: Or not necessarily remote all the time. But even even terminal emulators, you know, could be fine, whatever. But

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Chris Feeney: but yeah,

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Chris Feeney: But in this specific situation you've got a very powerful piece of software designed to protect

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Chris Feeney: that had a

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Chris Feeney: regular update. On that you have many updates over time. And this one particular caused an issue that unfortunately affected millions of machines.

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Andy Whiteside: So.

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Chris Feeney: Chris.

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Andy Whiteside: I wanna get back to the let's run windows where you need to run windows and everywhere else. You don't need to run it. Don't run it conversation. But I do. Wanna ask you a question because cause I don't know the answer. This, I keep meaning to listen to podcasts and try to read up on this, and I don't know if it's public knowledge yet. But what went wrong this time did was was there no change control? Was there no testing? Was there? You know, rogue

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Andy Whiteside: person that calls this. Do you know what the issue was here? Cause look, cross strikes a big boy company they've got, you know, mitigations in place to prevent this from happening. What? What went wrong.

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Chris Feeney: I haven't seen anything. I mean, maybe something's come out since the weekend. I haven't seen anything yet.

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Chris Feeney: I mean, so I can't

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Chris Feeney: definitively answer that question. It would seem that something in the Qa. Process got missed, or whatever

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Chris Feeney: somehow, where this would have been caught early before it got out the door. That would be the general operating theory, in my opinion, but I I can't say for sure exactly.

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Chris Feeney: I'm sure.

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Andy Whiteside: You hope they have some kind of canary

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Andy Whiteside: concept where they they rolled it out to a portion of the environment.

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Andy Whiteside: and they didn't try to roll it, and not the whole thing, and they didn't try to roll it out to everybody, but it feels like they roll it out to everybody like somebody told somebody, hey? I don't know. Just hit the button.

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Chris Feeney: Yeah. And I again, I I was trying to catch up on what happened. I just don't know exactly

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Chris Feeney: what

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Chris Feeney: what happened in this particular scenario

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Chris Feeney: other than the update got out and caused the obviously a large impact

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Chris Feeney: that is still being felt.

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Chris Feeney: but.

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Andy Whiteside: Let's try to revisit that on a future. Podcast. Once we know cause. I I want people to know what you know, how not to do this. I mean, this happens every day with inside corporations. It just doesn't make the news because it doesn't have as big a impact.

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Chris Feeney: Yeah, no doubt.

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Chris Feeney: So today's topic is is really on this blog, you know, if you find yourself in a situation where the operating system. In this case, running windows.

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Chris Feeney: you have a B side, and and you somehow can't get out of this.

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Chris Feeney: What they refer to as a boot loop essentially.

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Chris Feeney: You go to boot and bam. You hit the B side and you can't get out of it.

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Chris Feeney: Well, the

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Chris Feeney: options that we kinda highlight are not for those that have listened to the podcast and no. I gel, it's not something that we're necessarily brand new with a solution the Ud pocket is certainly a a very it's built for bypassing the local hard drive on the machine, and and then just booting to it. Now, obviously, too.

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Chris Feeney: get to that. You have to be able to allow booting to USB, so that would require

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Chris Feeney: getting into what is called the ufe or

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Chris Feeney: other people know as bios.

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Chris Feeney: and so you may require some

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Chris Feeney: depending on your hardware. HP, Lenovo, lg, whatever they all different sort of how to get into the bios or the boot menu, and then you can pick

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Chris Feeney: an alternate

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Chris Feeney: option to boot from. So that's

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Chris Feeney: probably the easiest way to get get to that. But there are some caveats.

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Andy Whiteside: Chris, what does Bio stand for.

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Chris Feeney: Oh, man's.

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Andy Whiteside: Base basic.

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Chris Feeney: Basic interrupt. Damn it! Sorry.

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Andy Whiteside: I think it's basic input operating system or basic operating system.

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Chris Feeney: And on.

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Andy Whiteside: It's machine code to get you

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Andy Whiteside: to the boot files of the operating system so that the kernel can take over.

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Andy Whiteside: Try it.

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Andy Whiteside: And what you're talking about. The Bios configuration screens.

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Chris Feeney: Right. So I've got a laptop here on my left that

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Chris Feeney: I've got 2 different laptops, one

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Chris Feeney: I can boot directly to USB, because I've got it set to to do that in the in the boot order.

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Chris Feeney: The other one. I don't. It boots directly to the hard drive. But if I want to boot to USB, I just kind of go and

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Chris Feeney: yeah hit the escape key, or or whatever F. 10. And then I get the boot menu, and I can choose to boot to a Ud pocket. So.

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Chris Feeney: But you can change that if you have bios access, and you can

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Chris Feeney: do that. So that's 1 way you can kind of

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Chris Feeney: recover, at least get a machine operational, and then you can come back in this particular situation. The the fix

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Chris Feeney: for Bsad might be.

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Chris Feeney: you know, very specific, or who knows? It might need to be reimaged or something. But.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, I'm I'm curious. Maybe you know, what what did they do to fix this? Because you're in a you're in a situation where you can't

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Andy Whiteside: boot. So therefore you can't phone home. Did they have to?

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Andy Whiteside: How did they get the software patch

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Andy Whiteside: out to fix the problem? If you couldn't actually start the car and drive it to the dealership.

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Chris Feeney: Oh, I my general understanding is in the case of of cross strike. Is that the fix is to remove what was put on there that's causing the blue screen of death.

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Chris Feeney: But to do that you have to be able to get

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Chris Feeney: to what's called safe mode or recovery mode

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Chris Feeney: command line essentially, and then go through and follow some instructions. But one of the other challenges that people are seeing is that if you have the bitlocker disk encryption puts. Then you have to know the bit locker key.

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Chris Feeney: And that could be different, for every machine.

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Chris Feeney: which would probably be the right best practice.

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Chris Feeney: or some corporations may have the same Bitlocker key for all their machines.

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Chris Feeney: For convenience sake

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Chris Feeney: it all depends.

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Chris Feeney: but that can throw wrinkle in it.

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Andy Whiteside: Of these machines were virtual, and they could be snapshoted back before the patch.

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Chris Feeney: Read some stuff. And certainly I know Scott. Manchester. Put out a note about Cloud, PC. And and going back and rolling back to a a snapshot, so that certainly is an approach where that could that could definitely occur.

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Andy Whiteside: Did he also put something in about? You know, non persistent vms and just rebooting them back to where they started.

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Chris Feeney: I didn't read that necessarily. There may be others that have chimed in but certainly, you know, this kind of goes back to the persistent non persistence.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, what? What I'm getting at that response. Chris, is windows 365 is not the answer to everything. If you know the truth.

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Andy Whiteside: If you don't know the truth, people can make you feel like it's the answer to every problem.

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Chris Feeney: Yeah. Well.

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Chris Feeney: a different

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Chris Feeney: product in the cloud for Microsoft than Abd

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Chris Feeney: everything has its pros and cons.

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Andy Whiteside: My my answer to this problem is not more, Microsoft.

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Andy Whiteside: certainly not on the endpoint. That's.

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Chris Feeney: What is your answer, Andy?

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Andy Whiteside: My answer is, don't get in a don't drive your car to meet the Uber.

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Chris Feeney: You've used that analogy before.

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Andy Whiteside: Take a bike down the street or walk, but don't. Don't get in your car to go meet Uber, or don't take an uber to meet an Uber.

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Chris Feeney: Yeah, that would seem very interesting. And we've talked about it before. I mean.

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Chris Feeney: but yeah, so the the options that are laid out here in a Dr. Scenario, which is obviously what you're dealing with globally and and many cases

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Chris Feeney: agile certainly has the ability to try to boot to our ud pocket.

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Chris Feeney: and the other option is highlighted. There is kind of booting and actually installing Igel on the device

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Chris Feeney: which would in theory

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Chris Feeney: blow away the operating system on the device.

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Chris Feeney: Or I think actually, now I read it more. He's referring to

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Chris Feeney: booting to the OS Creator to then install the OS on a second USB. Stick

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Chris Feeney: kind of like a ud pocket. Now.

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Chris Feeney: that would be an extreme sort of scenario in the sense that

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Chris Feeney: if it's not a Ud pocket, an actual unique pocket has a serial, lies number on it. That that is is very specific to be able to unplug that device and plug it into other ones.

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Chris Feeney: Creating a Ud pocket on a separate USB stick could be done. But it's it's only going to be isolated to that, to the 1st machine that boots up.

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Chris Feeney: And that's it. Yeah, it's not portable. So

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Chris Feeney: but if you're in a tight spot, that may be your only option until you can get the original hard drive fixed, or whatever.

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Andy Whiteside: Well, let me let me say what you just said differently.

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Andy Whiteside: OS Creator, create another USB drive great! Get a ud pocket

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Andy Whiteside: that'll get you through this gap, this space and time.

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Andy Whiteside: then come up with a strategy on how you're going to mitigate windows, Microsoft windows which I love.

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Andy Whiteside: You're going to mitigate it

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Andy Whiteside: where it needs to be mitigated, and use it where it needs to be used.

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Chris Feeney: Definitely. We've talked many times over about just endpoint strategy

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Chris Feeney: and pros and cons of

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Chris Feeney: using igl, sometimes you just

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Chris Feeney: you. You seen a browser. Sometimes you need a browser and a a desktop of sorts, a virtual desktop but from a.

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Andy Whiteside: In my dream world. You've got a a resilient platform like a nutanix

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Andy Whiteside: with windows vms on it desktops and app servers that boot back to a gold image that presents, not delivers, but presents it down to a Linux based endpoint and and all that is a read only read, only read only operating systems all the way up through that. And, Chris, the only thing you would need at that point is limited rights for the end users that are using the system. And some type of lightweight antivirus.

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Andy Whiteside: malware detecting software is all you would need in that scenario versus

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Andy Whiteside: a big, massive product like restaurant

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Andy Whiteside: boot.

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Chris Feeney: Yeah.

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Chris Feeney: that's all it takes. But yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: People default to installing big, heavy, bloated, amazingly capable windows on everything.

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Andy Whiteside: because it's the path of least resistance. And it's the easiest thing to do, because it's what you've always done.

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Andy Whiteside: But someday we're gonna figure out

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Andy Whiteside: that we can't keep doing that

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Andy Whiteside: because there's too many bad actors out there, or too many incompetent

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Andy Whiteside: technology companies that have.

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Chris Feeney: Have access?

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Andy Whiteside: Here.

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Chris Feeney: Yeah.

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Chris Feeney: I will say.

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Chris Feeney: Justin, we

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Chris Feeney: to the folks that are dealing with on the front lines, I mean, I I know our our thoughts go with you, I mean is not easy.

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Chris Feeney: Given the instructions that that are there to try to recover.

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Chris Feeney: There's there's

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Chris Feeney: I I've seen some details about maybe how to automate some stuff. We're talking about physical endpoints.

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Andy Whiteside: But but, Chris, I'm gonna pull an Andy on you.

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Andy Whiteside: Those are the same people that are protecting that turf and won't

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Andy Whiteside: work with their companies to find smarter, better ways.

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Chris Feeney: That could be very true. I know you've dealt with it personally. So

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Chris Feeney: yeah.

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Chris Feeney: so.

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Chris Feeney: And they're there.

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Andy Whiteside: Historically, there have been reasons why, from a user experience.

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Andy Whiteside: But for the most part

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Andy Whiteside: those things are gone.

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Andy Whiteside: And you really can have a good user experience, if not great user experience and mitigate windows on the endpoint.

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Chris Feeney: Yeah. And I think that's a, we've talked about this.

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Chris Feeney: We've now on podcast. 97, I guarantee you, we've had this same topic conversation about user experience, running Linux on IGO Linux on the endpoint

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Chris Feeney: in 50 of those episodes easily. And so this is not necessarily a new topic for us. But it's really

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Chris Feeney: just.

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Chris Feeney: you know, the the understanding. What's possible.

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Chris Feeney: And what user experience, you know, can be, can I mean just

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Chris Feeney: for me? I've tried to.

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Chris Feeney: you know. Let me like that I've talked about before we presented at one of your

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Chris Feeney: kickoffs a couple years ago, and I made I wanted to make sure I did it from my agile device, and

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Chris Feeney: I just used the edge browser and logged into the browser and pulled up teams and just used that to present everything from the browser, and it worked flawlessly.

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Chris Feeney: Yeah, so

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Chris Feeney: and there.

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Chris Feeney: excellent. It was a great user experience, generally speaking.

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Chris Feeney: No, no hiccups. So it doesn't.

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Chris Feeney: That's, I think people understand, need to understand. And that's what.

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Andy Whiteside: That was, that was a little bit of an extreme use case for that person that sits down at their desk, either at the Home Office, the remote office or in the headquarters every day. It's not an extreme use case anymore. It can just work.

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Chris Feeney: Absolutely.

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Chris Feeney: so.

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Andy Whiteside: So, Chris, I think we've covered it here. I've you know, said my piece. You said your piece.

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Andy Whiteside: i i i just want the world to know that it's it's it's okay to run windows on servers.

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Andy Whiteside: Ideally, you're running server core and not full blown windows that would get rid of a lot of security risk right there run windows on endpoints makes sense when it's the right use case. I'm I've got 1, 2, 3 laptops running windows around me right now, and one all, and run running, Lin Running Linux. But on any given day I'd grab one of those laptops, and I jump on airplane. I travel and go do what I do. Could I make Igel work for that? Yes. Is it the right thing for that power user? Probably not.

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Andy Whiteside: But is the one that sits on my desk all day, or the one that sits on the airline terminal counter. The right thing to run windows on? Probably not.

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Chris Feeney: I think it. You know it comes down to.

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Chris Feeney: What do you need that thing to do? And

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Chris Feeney: is that for me? Walking around the airport, seeing a lot of these display boards.

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Chris Feeney: you know. I mean, that's that's a very we've actually got a

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Chris Feeney: press release back in June with lg, talking about that specific use case display boards, you know.

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Andy Whiteside: Display boards are clearly a much older operating system that have their own set of challenges.

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Chris Feeney: Yeah, I mean, so they.

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Chris Feeney: I mean

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Chris Feeney: users, not generally interacting with the board. It's just there. I mean, you can put whatever. So that's just a simple scenario where

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Chris Feeney: you know.

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Chris Feeney: Obviously keep it up and running. You can put information about what's happening

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Chris Feeney: but I mean to walk around and see these messages.

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Chris Feeney: I mean it.

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Chris Feeney: It's and then to understand that it's not isolated, that one particular location. It's happening globally, really kind of think from a

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Chris Feeney: wow.

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Chris Feeney: I didn't realize.

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Chris Feeney: you know personally how many machines were out there running windows. You know.

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Andy Whiteside: About how silly this is. But the the a bad actor could be a 14 year old kid in his basement, or could be a a foreign government could literally

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Andy Whiteside: hack

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Andy Whiteside: a company like American Airlines' kiosk terminals, running windows and just change the flight numbers around all over the country and have an economic impact on the United States or America.

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Chris Feeney: It's that that kind of scenario could certainly play out potentially. So.

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Andy Whiteside: It'd be super easy.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, Chris. Thank you for the time covering this. Always good to chat about this one this one. If you're a golfer, was teed up so high and so perfectly to talk about and guess what

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Andy Whiteside: it happens every day in some organization.

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Andy Whiteside: it's always the right time to be having this.

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Andy Whiteside: Why are you running windows in places you don't need to run windows, conversations.

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Chris Feeney: Awesome. Well, I appreciate.

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Andy Whiteside: Any party, thoughts.

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Chris Feeney: No, I said, not necessarily a new topic for us, but certainly a top of mind, and and we'll see where the conversation goes from here. So.

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Andy Whiteside: It'll be interesting to keep an eye on this one. See what happens, number one to crowd strike! I I bet they recover. I bet in in 3 years. This is.

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Andy Whiteside: you know, it's a meme, probably a meme already, but in 3 years this is a drop in the bucket, and if you're smart you bought Crowdstrike when it hit the bottom of the stock market value and and goes back up. It's good company. They just made a mistake, and the the power and beauty of windows allowed it to be just, exponentially impactful.

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Chris Feeney: Green.

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Andy Whiteside: Alright, sir, I look forward to seeing you later this afternoon when you come in the office, and we'll do this again in 2 weeks.

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Chris Feeney: Alrighty! Take care! Thanks.