The Day I Broke the Internet (Sort Of)

I want to share a harrowing experience that many of us may face at some point in our careers: pushing a code update to production that doesn’t go quite as planned. This post is also inspired by the recent CrowdStrike incident, where a bad production update temporarily rendered millions of Windows PCs unusable.

The CrowdStrike Incident

Before I dive into my own story, let’s take a quick look at what happened with CrowdStrike. Just a few days ago, a misconfigured update caused widespread outages for countless Windows systems worldwide. This incident was a stark reminder of how even the most seasoned companies can make mistakes that lead to significant disruptions.

My Own Experience: When Things Go Wrong

As a developer, I’m no stranger to pushing updates and deploying new features. But there’s always that underlying fear of accidentally causing a ripple effect of problems. Well, that fear became a reality for me not too long ago.

The Day It All Went South

It was a typical day at the office. We had been working on a major update for our web application that included several new features and some crucial bug fixes. After countless hours of development and testing in our staging environment, it was time to go live.

The Update

The update included changes to our user authentication system, optimizations for database queries, and a few new UI components. Everything seemed perfect in staging, so I confidently pushed the changes to production.

The Fallout

Within minutes of the update going live, users started reporting broken login functionalities, and even some complete outages. Panic ensued as we scrambled to diagnose the problem.

Here’s what went wrong:

A minor oversight in the authentication logic led to users being logged out unexpectedly or, worse, being logged in as other users in some rare cases.

The Response

Realizing the gravity of the situation, we immediately rolled back to the previous stable version. This gave us breathing room to investigate and fix the issues without further impact on our users.

Here’s a quick timeline of how we managed the crisis:

• Update pushed to production.
• Issues began surfacing.
• Rollback initiated to the previous stable version.
• Full service restoration; systems back online.
• Root cause analysis conducted, and patches developed.

Lessons Learned

While the CrowdStrike incident was a large-scale reminder of the importance of cautious updates, my own experience was a humbling lesson on the same front. Here are some key takeaways from the ordeal:

1. Testing at Scale: Testing in staging is not enough. We need to simulate real-world traffic and loads to ensure our updates can handle the pressure.

2. Code Reviews: Never underestimate the power of a second (or third) pair of eyes on your code. A fresh perspective can catch issues you might overlook.

3. Gradual Rollouts: Consider rolling out updates gradually rather than all at once. This way, if something goes wrong, you can limit the impact to a smaller subset of users.

4. Monitoring and Alerts: Having robust monitoring tools can make a huge difference. Early alerts allow you to act swiftly and mitigate potential damage.

5. Rollback Strategies: Always have a rollback plan. No matter how confident you are in an update, things can and do go wrong. A quick rollback can save you a lot of trouble.

Whether you’re working for a small startup or a major tech company like CrowdStrike, mistakes in production can happen. What’s important is how we respond to these incidents and learn from them. Each experience makes us better developers and more prepared for future challenges.