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New Crowdstrike themed scams snowball

Happy Friday


We're not out of the woods yet. In the aftermath of the global Crowstrike outage (yes, that's me being interviewed) that grounded planes, shuttered stores, closed down medical facilities, and more, national cybersecurity agencies in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia all reported a huge surge in scammer activity.

 

Suprisingly this has received much attention in national news and it's a once in a lifetime opportunity for scammers. Many companies, operating in emergency mode have been wiping systems to get them back online, often neglecting to reinstall Crowdstrike or any other antivirus software.

 

Cybercriminals have been exploiting this vulnerability by impersonating CrowdStrike or competing antivirus companies, offering 'deals' on their solutions. In the past week alone, security researchers have identified over 2,000 new phishing and typosquatted domains mimicking CrowdStrike, with numbers continuing to rise daily. It's gotten so bad that Crowstrike posted a press release to warn the public.

 

The Takeaway

 

We're seeing fake Crowdstrike "hotfixes" being used to deliver malware. Scammers are also using fake tech support calls, text messages and emails with pdf attachments that when opened, wipe computers.

 

In one case this week, the pro-Hamas group Handala claimed to have destroyed terabytes of data across 'dozens' of Israeli organizations using targeted phishing emails disguised as CrowdStrike communications.

 

What can you do? For starters, avoid tech support from anywhere other than CrowdStrike's own website and customer service channels. Use common sense and stay vijilant as these scams are hot right now. In a few weeks, they won't be, so we just have to wait it out.

 

Stay safe out there.

 

-A

 

PS. In case you missed the KITV news segment on the CrowdStrike outage where Cypac was featured, here's the link.



Attila Cypac

  

New Friday Funnies

 

A Crowdstrike server walks into a shoe repair store.  

Shopkeeper says "it appears you need a re-boot."

 

(that joke was cobblers)

  

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