Yesterday brought a huge disruption of the computers used by banks, airlines, radio, television stations, hospitals and more who used Crowdstrike’s Falcon EDR product on Microsoft Windows machines.  The disruption was not caused by a hacker or a ransomware attack, but rather faulty update of the software sent to computers using Microsoft Windows.  In the wake of this massive disruption, scammers are taking advantage of the situation by posing as Crowdstrike or Microsoft and sending phishing emails to lure people into clicking on links in the emails either may download dangerous malware on to your computer or take you to a phony Crowdstrike or Microsoft website where you will be directed to provide personal information that can lead to identity theft or click on malware infected links.

Cybersecurity researches have already identified the registration of a number of website domain names that appear to be created to mimic the real Crowdstrike websites.  Crowdstrikebluescreen.com and crwodstrike0day.com are two of these recently registered websites of which you should be aware.

TIPS

The good news is that the Crowdstrike Falcon EDR software is not something that you or I as individual computer users use in our computers so you can feel safe ignoring any emails, pop-ups or text messages that try to convince you to click on any links or provide information.  As I often warn you, you can never be sure when you get an email, text message or phone call as to who is actually contacting you so you should never click on a link, download an attachment or provide personal information in response to an email, text message or phone call until you have absolutely confirmed that it is legitimate.  In the case of any communications you get in regard to Crowdstrike, you can safely ignore it.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email where it states “Sign up for this blog.”