Posted on July 22, 2024
Microsoft has averred that it believes that 8. During the global IT outage, 5m computers globally were affected.
This is the first time that someone has tried to put a figure to the episode and implies that it could be the worst cyber event ever.
The glitch was originated from a security company by the name CrowdStrike which released a software update that contained viruses to the numerous customers with whom it has established business.
Microsoft, which is helping customers recover said in a blog post: “Currently, based on CrowdStrike’s update, the company estimates the attack affected 8. 5 million Windows devices. “
The post strongly linked to David Weston, the vice-president at the firm, argues that this is less than 1% of all the Windows machines around the world but the “aggregate economic and societal implications associate the CrowdStrike firm with many enterprise organizations that run vital services”.
The company can be very precise on how many devices were affected by the outage because it has access to the performance telemetry to many by their internet connections.
The tech giant –is quick to note that this is not a problem its software –notes that this exposes the need for companies such as CrowdStrike to ensure that updates taken through quality control before they are released to the market.
“It is also a good reminder for all across the foot print ecosystem of how critical it is to operate with safe deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanism that exists,” Mr Weston.
The consequences of the IT glitch have been colossal and it was already one of the most severe cyber-incidents in history.
The number provided by Microsoft suggests that it is likely to be the biggest cyber-incident conceivable and supersedes all the previous hacks and blackouts.
The nearest to this is the WannaCry cyber attack that took place in 2017, expected to damage about 300, 000 computers across 150 counties. The same expensive and extremely destructive attack, NotPetya, occurred a month later.
The same year, social media platform operators, Meta that owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, suffered a six-hour breakdown. This, however, was more or less contained to the social media giant and its allied related companies.
The latter also raised warnings by cyber-security specialists and agencies of other countries concerning a series of cyber-attacks linked to the IT outage.
UK and Australian cyber authorities are advising the public to look out to this; fake emails, phone calls and websites claiming to be legit.
And CrowdStrike head George Kurtz urged to check if the callers were indeed representatives of the company and not download the fixes.
”We understand that opponents and competitors, as well as elements close to them or that are not very pure themselves, will try to use such atrocious actions for their purposes,” he wrote in a blog post.
Every time the event of a large scale news occurrence or the occurrence associated with the sphere of technology, hackers adapt their activity according to the element of fear.
As researchers and scientists at Secureworks have found out, crowd strike themed domain registration has already been on the steep rise – hackers registering domains with appearances that seem legitimate and subsequent aims of deceiving IT managers or members of the public into downloading malicious programs or passing on their private information.
The cyber security agencies worldwide have encouraged the IT responders to only use the CrowdStrike website for fetching information and assistance.
The advice is mostly intended for the IT managers who are the ones getting victimized by this while trying to regain their organizations online services.
However, the individuals also might be targeted, thus, experts advise to be very suspicious and act only based on the messages from the official sources in CrowdStrike.