Efforts to deal with a global tech outage that caused chaos for travellers, hospitals and banks are underway, but it may not be the end of your computer woes: Phishing schemes trying to reel in businesses and individuals are now coming to light.
Security specialists are warning to be aware of malicious actors purporting to be tech specialists offering help to recover from the outage, which was caused by a faulty software update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
Some of the scammers may even be posing as employees of Texas-based CrowdStrike, which has offices around the world.
CrowdStrike said it’s not believed a hack or cyberattack was behind the outage and it has delivered a fix to address it. The company has apologized and vows to be as transparent as possible in assessing what happened, while warning some may be trying to take advantage of the situation.
For instance, in Latin America, there have been attempts by scammers trying to trick people and the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre said it has noticed an increase in phishing attempts related to the outage.
On Friday, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz told NBC’s Today Show that the company is working with its customers globally to ensure they get back online safely.
“It could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover,” he said. “But it is our mission … to make sure every customer is fully recovered, and we’re not going to relent until we get every customer back to where they were, and we continue to protect them and keep the bad guys out of their systems.”
Canadians woke up Friday to a global tech outage disrupting operations in multiple industries. Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike’s Falcon Sensor software caused Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue error screen. Cybersecurity and tech analyst Ritesh Kotak explains how the outage impacted subscribed to Crowdstrike and what mitigation actions Microsoft might be taking.
Outage prime pickings for scammers, Canadian analyst says
Microsoft said Saturday about 8.5 million devices running its Windows operating system were affected in the IT crash that left some stuck on what’s known as the “blue screen of death” — signalling computers have been knocked offline in a full system failure without the ability to restart.
That’s less than one per cent of all Windows-based machines, Microsoft cybersecurity executive David Weston said in a blog post Saturday.
He also said such a significant disturbance is rare but “demonstrates the interconnected nature of our broad ecosystem.”
Still, said Carmi Levy, a technology analyst in Canada, scammers are always scanning news headlines to jump on opportunities to go phishing.
Typically, they’ll reach out by email or social media instant messaging, he said. Some will even call and say they’re from a support department, a way to “look for opportunities to…
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