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Cyber experts say the scams may come in the form of messages or emails.
photo: 123 RF
New Zealand cyber experts warn New Zealanders to beware of the following scams CrowdStrike IT Outage Friday.
Cybercriminals reportedly sought to exploit a global IT meltdown that occurred late Friday when a software update run by US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused chaos, leading to flight cancellations and online banking outages around the world.
Jordan Helspin of the National Cyber Security Centre, part of the Government Communications Security Bureau, said people should carefully check any communications claiming to be from CrowdStrike or Microsoft.
“We have noticed an increase in phishing campaigns related to this outage. We know that malicious actors do like to use current events to target people with their campaigns.”
Helspin said the agency has seen scammers exploit the campaign to carry out criminal acts — usually in the form of text messages or emails.
“It’s primarily a message or an email that involves CrowdStrike Support or CrowdStrike Security. It could also involve Microsoft.
“They will ask people to provide credentials or download some files, and then the criminals will use this data to carry out further activities.”
Meanwhile, Nadia Yousef, cybersecurity analyst and Lens country manager for New Zealand Chief Information Security Officer, said other countries may take longer to recover from the CrowdStrike outage. She said most internet services in New Zealand were being restored, but not everyone was so lucky.
“Obviously our friends in the US and Europe are more impacted. Their networks are bigger, their companies are bigger, and CrowdStrike’s reach is probably bigger.
“So I think it may take longer for our international counterparts to return to normal operations.”
She said the blackout was a reminder for New Zealand organisations and the government to make sure they had recovery plans in place.
“In this case, we have become victims of over-reliance on a few large companies, and what has happened in the past day or so reflects how that has played out.”
Meanwhile, restaurants and bars did not appear to be too affected. Marisa Bidois, chief executive of the Restaurant Association, said some customers had experienced delays, but there was no sign the outage had stopped people from going out.
“The reports we’re getting right now are still consistent with normal numbers for Friday evening, but we’ll certainly get more data as the week goes on.”
Bidois said there were reports that some businesses were having problems accepting payments via bank transfers and were “relegated to having people sign receipts to pay later”.
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