Malicious actors seek to exploit global technology disruptions for personal gain

As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a bug in a cybersecurity company’s software update Crowdfundingmalicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain.

Government cybersecurity agencies around the world and even CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world to be wary of a new phishing scheme in which malicious actors impersonate CrowdStrike employees or other technical experts, offering to help those recovering from an outage.

“We know that adversaries and bad actors will seek to exploit events like this,” Kurz said in a statement. statement“I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and make sure to engage with a CrowdStrike representative.”

The UK’s Cyber ​​Security Centre said they had noticed an increase in phishing attempts surrounding the campaign.

Microsoft Microsoft said the vulnerability in Friday’s cybersecurity update affected 8.5 million devices running the Windows operating system, causing outages around the world. That’s less than 1% of all Windows-based machines, Microsoft cybersecurity chief David Weston said in a blog post on Saturday.

He also said that such serious riots, while rare, “show that Our vast ecosystem is interconnected“”.

By late morning on the U.S. East Coast, major airlines around the world had canceled more than 1,500 flights, according to flight tracking service FlightAware, far fewer than the more than 5,100 cancellations on Friday.

Two-thirds of Saturday’s cancellations were in the United States, where airlines scrambled to get planes and crews back in the air after disruptions were so severe a day earlier. U.S. airlines canceled about 3.5% of scheduled flights on Saturday, according to travel data provider Cirium. Only Australia was hit harder.

Among major air travel markets, flight cancellations were around 1% in the UK, France and Brazil, and around 2% in Canada, Italy and India.

Robert Mann, a former airline executive and current New York-area consultant, said it was unclear exactly why U.S. airlines were experiencing a surge in flight cancellations, but possible reasons included greater outsourcing of technology and greater exposure to Microsoft operating systems that received faulty upgrades from CrowdStrike.

Health care systems affected by the outages faced clinic closures, canceled surgeries and appointments, and limited access to patient records.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, said it was “making steady progress” getting its servers back online and thanked patients for their flexibility during the crisis.

“Our teams will be working aggressively throughout the weekend to continue resolving remaining issues and prepare for a new week of work,” the hospital wrote in an email. statement.

In Austria, a leading doctors’ organization said the outage exposed the vulnerability of reliance on digital systems. Harald Mayer, vice president of the Austrian Doctors’ Association, said the outage showed the need for hospitals to have analog backups to protect patient care.

The group also called on governments to enforce high standards for patient data protection and security, and for healthcare providers to train staff and establish crisis management systems.

“Fortunately, although there were problems, they were small and short-lived and many areas of healthcare in Austria were not affected,” Meyer said.

The University Hospital of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany canceled all elective surgeries on Friday and said on Saturday that the hospital system was gradually being restored and elective surgeries would resume on Monday.