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Recently, the US security technology company "CrowdStrike" released a software update, which caused the global downtime of Microsoft Windows. After this downtime incident with a rare impact and severity, cybersecurity agencies in many countries warned that companies and individuals around the world should be wary of phishing attempts by people pretending to be "CrowdStrike" employees or technical experts in the name of "repairing the system."

The Australian Communications Authority issued a statement on its official website on the 20th, saying that the Australian Cyber ​​Security Center under the agency has learned that some people have claimed through certain malicious websites and unofficial codes that they can help relevant entities recover from the large-scale interruption caused by the technical incident of "Crowdstrike". The center "strongly encourages" relevant consumers to obtain technical information and updates from "Crowdstrike" as a source.

Australian Home Affairs and Cyber ​​Security Minister Claire O'Neill said on her social media account that Australian citizens should "be aware of possible scams and phishing attempts."

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement on the 19th saying that although the outage caused by the "Crowdstrike" company software update was not related to a cyber attack or malicious activity, the agency observed that actors engaging in malicious cyber activities "are using this incident to conduct phishing and other malicious activities." The agency warned individuals to "avoid clicking on phishing emails or suspicious links" because this may lead to email leaks and other fraud issues.

The UK National Cyber ​​Security Center also issued a statement on the 19th warning that the agency has noticed an increase in phishing attempts during this incident as malicious actors try to take advantage of the situation. Among their targets, there may be both organizations and individuals.

George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, also warned in a statement released on the 19th that malicious actors would try to take advantage of such incidents. "I encourage everyone to remain vigilant" and make sure to contact representatives of CrowdStrike.

Meanwhile, the aftermath of the massive outage is still ongoing. The latest data from the US flight tracking website shows that hundreds of domestic and international flights in the United States are still canceled, and the airline with the most canceled flights is Delta Airlines.

On the 19th, Microsoft Windows system and some other Microsoft applications and services experienced a large-scale outage, causing the aviation, railway, shipping, finance, medical, hotel and other industries in many countries to be unable to operate normally, and the work and life of many enterprises and individual users were seriously disrupted. Microsoft announced on the 20th that the global technical failure has affected 8.5 million devices using the Windows operating system.

Although Microsoft and CrowdStrike have provided users with repair guides, it will take some time for all the affected "blue screen" computers to return to normal due to the large number of users involved. Junaid Ali, a cybersecurity expert at the Institution of Engineering and Technology in the UK, said that this was the largest global downtime incident since 2017. In 2017, the WannaCry ransomware software used a vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows system to attack networked computers in many parts of the world, affecting the operation of many government departments and multiple industries.

Microsoft Windows is the most widely used personal computer operating system in the world. Zhongji has nearly 30,000 customers around the world, including many Fortune 500 companies.

Column Editor: Qin Hong Text Editor: Song Hui Title Image Source: Shangguan Title Image Image Editor: Su Wei

Source: Author: Xinhua News Agency