CrowdStrike has now issued an alert of potentially more cyberattack attempts following the global IT outage that affected millions of computers last Friday.
In a blog post last Friday, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz warned affected businesses that "adversaries and bad actors" could exploit the outage to target vulnerable networks.
(Photo : Stefano Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images)
These are in addition to phishing schemes and scammers that could take advantage of the situation to deceive customers to provide crucial security information to potential hackers.
CrowdStrike Outage Impacts UK, US, Australia Tech Networks
Cybersecurity agencies from the UK, the US, and Australia, where the outage has been mostly felt, have issued similar warnings after they "observed threat actors taking advantage of this incident for phishing and other malicious activity."
Microsoft, whose Windows systems were affected by the outage, claimed over 8.5 million computers were impacted by the outage, many of which have been restored this Sunday.
Many facilities, including airports, hospitals, and banks, were greatly impacted by the outage, the same sectors that have seen an increase in cyberattacks in recent years.
Both companies have already clarified that the outage was not due to a Windows issue but rather a faulty security update from CrowdStrike.
Also Read: Microsoft Outage Hits Global Operations of Bank, Airlines
How Could Bad Actors Exploit CrowdStrike IT Outage?
According to cybersecurity agencies, threat actors could take advantage of the outage by posing as tech support from CrowdStrike or its affiliates.
Hackers could also take the chance to try to breach into security networks when most cybersecurity systems are down due to the outage.
This, in turn, could cause a major cybersecurity incident in major financial, technological, and medical sectors that rely on CrowdStrike for digital protection.
So far, no major data breach from the global IT outage has been reported, although officials have intercepted several attempts already since Friday.
Related Article: CrowdStrike Outage, the Day After: How Big the Outage's Impact Truly Is
