As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain.
Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage.
“We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives.”
Photo: AFP
The UK National Cyber Security Centre said it had noticed an increase in phishing attempts around the event.
Microsoft said 8.5 million devices running its Windows operating system were affected by Friday’s faulty cybersecurity update, which led to worldwide disruptions.
That is less than 1 percent of all Windows-based machines, Microsoft vice president of enterprise and OS security David Weston wrote in a blog post on Saturday.
Such a significant disturbance is rare, but “demonstrates the interconnected nature of our broad ecosystem,” he said.
By late Saturday morning on the US East Coast, airlines around the world had canceled more than 1,500 flights, far fewer than the 5,100-plus cancellations on Friday, figures from tracking service FlightAware showed.
Two-thirds of Saturday’s canceled flights occurred in the US, where carriers scrambled to get planes and crews back into position after massive disruptions the day before.
US carriers canceled about 3.5 percent of their scheduled flights for Saturday, travel data provider Cirium said.
Only Australia was hit harder.
Canceled flights were running at about 1 percent in Brazil, France and the UK, and about 2 percent in Canada, Italy and India among major air-travel markets.
Robert Mann, a former airline executive and now a consultant in the New York area, said it was unclear exactly why US airlines were suffering disproportionate cancellations, but possible causes include a greater degree of outsourcing of technology and more exposure to Microsoft operating systems that received the faulty upgrade from CrowdStrike.
Health care systems affected by the outage faced clinic closures, canceled surgeries and appointments and restricted access to patient records.
In Austria, a leading organization of doctors said the outage exposed the vulnerability of relying on digital systems.
The outage showed that hospitals need to have analog backups to protect patient care, Austrian Chamber of Doctors vice president Harald Mayer said.
The organization also called on governments to impose high standards in patient data protection and security, and on health providers to train staff and put systems in place to manage crises.
“Happily, where there were problems, these were kept small and short-lived and many areas of care were unaffected” in Austria, Mayer said.
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