Cybercriminals quickly exploit CrowdStrike chaos

Well that was fast. Criminals didn't waste any time taking advantage of the CrowdStrike-Microsoft chaos and quickly got to work phishing organizations and spinning up malicious domains purporting to be fixes. Just hours after a faulty CrowdStrike file shut down Windows machines around the globe, reports surfaced of scam emails …

[Pascal Monett]

"Criminals didn't waste any time"

If only they used such energy for honest work, our civilization would stride forward instead of staying mired in muck.

[Andy Non]

Re: "Criminals didn't waste any time"

Yes indeed. If there were no cybercriminals there wouldn't even be a need for CrowdStrike security software in the first place. Alas, it will never happen, always someone wanting a free lunch at others expense.

[quartzz]

Re: "Criminals didn't waste any time"

Who is the criminal, the person who steals £150 trainers, or the brand name that charges £150 for the trainers #edgycomment ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Criminals didn't waste any time"

Wait? Are we talking about Microsoft or other criminals?

The reason for this broken update strategy was foisted onto the industry by Microsoft a few years ago remember. Many of us said "No".

[Gene Cash]

Re: "Criminals didn't waste any time"

No kidding. I can't think of anybody that could match these guy's response time. They started capitalizing on this, including registering a domain, in what... a couple hours?

I hate these guys... but I'm impressed.

[sin]

Re: "Criminals didn't waste any time"

That could be said for some other things that people are wasting resources on, like making weapons (to "defend" themself from someone on the other side of the globe)? Or building whole cities for rich people to enjoy (at $10.000 per night), while making poor people even more poor AND destroying the Earth in doing that? It is unfortunately true that people as species are only good at finding new ways to hurt other people...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was sympathetic right up to the point they used "leverage" as a verb.

Muppets

[Mike 137]

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz [...] assured customers "this is not a security incident ...

Yes it is. The canonical security triad is CIA -- confdentiality, integrity, AVAILABILITY

[Omnipresent]

It's like beetlejuice

"The good news is that it is not a cyber attack," Agnidipta Sarkar, VP CISO advisory at ColorTokens told The Register.

If you say it three times.

[Pete 2]

????? on the desktop

> Criminals didn't waste any time taking advantage of the CrowdStrike-Microsoft chaos

So will Linux or Apple start to take advantage of this chaos too?

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: ????? on the desktop

Depends on the end users. So, no.

[hoola]

Re: ????? on the desktop

They escaped the mess through luck, nothing much else.

[TeeCee]

Look on the bright side.

If you're a lawyer, this is going to keep you fully occupied and highly paid for years, suing the living fuck out of CrowdStrike.

[neilg]

Re: Look on the bright side.

" suing the living fuck out of CrowdStrike"

- For what? Having customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Look on the bright side.

At the very least for clearly having no coherent testing strategy before pushing a global update to customers (who should have their own testing regime as well).

[Gene Cash]

Of COURSE there's an XKCD

https://xkcd.com/2961/

No flies on Randall Munroe...

[hoola]

Insurance

I see a new insurance service appearing in the same way we have cyber insurance.

Fucked up SaaS Service Insurance.

As part of that it is likely to make things worse because they will have an approval list of vendors for stuff. Amongst those will be names like CrowdStrike, CarbonBlack and all the other "Modern" tools that are allegedly better than the "Legacy" products that they have replaced and actually worked.

FSSI, I the sound of that....

[Mike007]

Re: Insurance

Who is going to give you insurance for something that is guaranteed to happen multiple times a year at an affordable price? Soon To Be Bankrupt Insurance Ltd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cyber Pass

If only there was a way to alert and educate the people.

Like a mass news outlet to properly explain basic tech principles.

[quartzz]

Re: Cyber Pass

There is the BBC, but the majority of the content on their website has been Skynet references. The first 1,000,000 or so were amusing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cyber Pass

Luckily I've started to receive the Malwarebytes newsletter... except I didn't sign up for it!

(I have the freebie version installed on my laptop for the occasional 'second opinion' scan, but am getting tired of the 'nag' popups that seems to be getting more frequent... the newsletter goes to my mobile's separate email account, which rarely gets used to sign up for things)

[Boolian]

Elder Abuse

There isn't any resolution for this, because it will be successful. It will be successful because currently the 'News' across a myriad of media is variously : "The Internet is down! All Microsoft machines are down! Microsoft killed the Internet! CrowdStrike attack kills the Internet, kills Microsoft, your dog! etc.

The fact that it is a software error, on specific Microsoft operating systems, specifically hooked into CloudStrike software is not the point; the point is what does the majority believe, and the majority believes what it's told. If the majority believe that, they'll believe anything - and fork out for absolution.

Amid the unwarranted abuse, the Elders of the Internet may only stand aloof, and issue the 'Sacred Proclamation' to be be dispensed yet again by their Initiates: "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

*Edited for the capital "S" in the perps name...

[ricardian]

Remember the 2010 incident when McAfee mistakenly identified the Windows system file, svchost.exe, as a virus. George Kurtz was the CTO of McAfee at the time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course...

none of this would have happened, had Trump been President.... <MAJOR GUFFAW>

[heads up to Trump Acolytes/fanatics, this is sarcasm, sorry if you don't understand it].