Businesses and users worldwide have been impacted by a tech service outage.

The outage has affected airlines, hospitals, and fire departments, as well as many other businesses using Windows devices.  The culprit for this outage is an update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor. 

CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that provides cloud workload protection and endpoint security.  Falcon is the software product CrowdStrike uses to achieve that endpoint security.  Though CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has said in an interview with CNBC the update has been rolled back, many users are still dealing with the effects of the outage.  Namely, blue sceens of death (BSOD) on their devices.  And bad actors are trying to capitalize on it. 

According to CISA, the global IT outage is being taken advantage of by threat actors to start phishing scams.  Customers are advised to be cautious of emails supposedly from CrowdStrike.  Threat actors are using the outage to deliver ‘patches’ which contain malicious code. 

We advise all users to exercise caution and their best judgement to avoid phishing attacks.  Please follow instructions from legitimate sources you trust.  Avoid clicking suspicious emails or links.

As always, NGT is here to help! 
Contact ngthelp.com with questions.