CrowdStrike Outage Grounds Flights, Disables Hospitals, and Sparks CERT-In Phishing Attack Warning

Jul 29, 2024, 01:25 PM

The recent global outage of CrowdStrike's security software has had widespread repercussions, grounding flights, disabling hospitals, and affecting numerous businesses worldwide. The root cause of the incident was identified as an access violation bug in CrowdStrike’s kernel mode driver. Microsoft has provided a detailed technical analysis, explaining the necessity of security products running in kernel mode but acknowledging the risks involved. The Indian cyber security agency CERT-In has warned that the outage is being exploited to launch phishing attacks against CrowdStrike users. CrowdStrike has released an initial incident review, and experts emphasize the need for greater resilience and disaster preparedness in IT infrastructure. The incident has sparked discussions on the risks of relying heavily on a few third-party vendors for critical services.