Remember the DNC hack that was blamed on the Russians and started the entire Russiagate affair?
Did you know that the FBI never gained access to the servers or computers?
They based their assessment off of the assessment of a private company. Take a guess who. CrowdStrike.
Some of the headaches and logjams caused by the global IT outage people have been suffering through on Friday have mercifully started to ease as we move into the evening hours. But as my colleague Streiff reported this morning, it was something of a mess for millions of Microsoft users around the globe hoping to see the back of a long week:
Millions of users of Microsoft products found themselves without service Friday as a security update pushed out by Crowdstrike went terribly wrong. Across the globe, the outage knocked outoperations for banks, trains, airlines, and emergency services.
Windows computers and tablets crashed in countries from the U.S. to China and Australia, with reports of forced restarts of devices spreading across social media throughout the day.
The problem appeared to be caused by an update from CrowdStrike, Microsoft employees and outside technology professionals familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. Several cited an error message related to Crowdstrike on affected devices, and a subsequent workaround that was aimed at deleting a CrowdStrike file.
The CrowdStrike CEO dropped a boilerplate message to users on X, noting that “this is not a security incident or cyberattack,” which did little to quiet some grumbling on the social media site:
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We… Show more
One of the widely reported effects was a snowballing of delays and cancelations in air travel on Friday morning, with the glitch affecting major carriers American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines.
Considering the details of how many major companies depend on the CrowdStrike software in the Free Press report (linked above), the situation could not be more concerning: (emphasis mine)
The chaos was so widespread because the software is used by many of the nation's biggest businesses. CrowdStrike, in a promotional video, has said it is used by over half of "Fortune 500" companies, the largest U.S. businesses ranked by revenue by Fortune magazine, according to a USA Today report.
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