What do QA Testers and dinosaurs who don’t use AI have in common?
What do QA Testers and dinosaurs who don’t use AI have in common?
👉 They both risk extinction.
For years, there has been a narrative that AI is here to take our jobs. After all, AI can write code, test applications, design interfaces, organize sprints, and even assist with scrum management. This sparked massive layoffs in some companies as they rushed to replace human expertise with AI efficiency.
But here’s what many forgot: AI also comes with its own challenges.
Developers under tight deadlines increasingly turned to AI to generate code. Yet, in an interesting twist, some of the world’s biggest tech giants — Microsoft, Amazon, NVIDIA, and Apple — have placed restrictions on AI-assisted code generation. Their caution was largely driven by the infamous CrowdStrike outage.
The CrowdStrike Incident
On July 19, 2024, CrowdStrike released a configuration update (Channel File 291) to its Falcon sensor on Microsoft Windows systems. Falcon runs deep in the Windows kernel through a kernel driver designed to monitor system behavior.
Unfortunately, the update contained a flaw: an out-of-bounds memory read in the Content Interpreter component, caused by malformed template data. This error forced the kernel to access invalid memory, triggering widespread Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) crashes and reboot loops.
The impact was catastrophic. 8.5 million Windows machines went down, disrupting critical industries — airlines, hospitals, broadcasters, and financial systems were all hit hard.
Root Cause & Lessons for QA
The technical root cause pointed to a gap in testing and deployment. The “Rapid Response Content” updates bypassed the rigorous testing normally applied to standard sensor updates. Overconfidence in prior tests and insufficient error handling led to the flawed template being marked as “safe.”
How to Prevent Similar Failures
From this incident, every software vendor — especially those deploying updates at the kernel level — should adopt stronger engineering and QA practices:
- Robust validation & bounds checking
- Staged rollouts & canary deployments
- Comprehensive test coverage (negative tests, fuzzing, fault injection)
- Clear separation of update types & safety zones
- Fail-safe / fallback mechanisms
- Reduced kernel footprint & strong isolation
- Real-time monitoring & alerting
- Immutable, signed update artifacts with integrity checks
- Post-incident reviews & continuous improvement
Why QA Testers Are More Critical Than Ever
The CrowdStrike outage became a wake-up call for big tech companies that had deprioritized QA in favor of speed. In the rush to ship products faster, some sidelined testers — only to discover that the risks were far greater than the gains.
Today, QA Testers play a mission-critical role. Rigorous, end-to-end testing remains the best defense against catastrophic failures. Companies may win short-term speed by cutting QA corners — but without quality assurance, the long-term costs can be devastating.