Consumers should be on the lookout for a new series of scams popping up this week in connection with the worldwide CrowdStrike computer outage that shocked many businesses Friday morning.
As companies began to recover from the “blue screen of death” caused by a faulty systems update, cybersecurity experts point out that scammers wasted no time in buying domains targeting unsuspecting companies.
“Like CrowdStrikeCrashFix.com, for example,” said Nikolas Behar, cybersecurity professor at the University of San Diego. “Folks are registering those domains and using them to try to trick folks into downloading files, which are supposed to be the patch, but, in reality, it’s just a piece of malware that’s being installed on the system.”
Behar added that businesses with small or no IT personnel are especially vulnerable right now. Also at risk are companies having a hard time recovering from the outage that may be pressed to speed up the process.
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Even if you don’t own a business or work for one with downed computers, though, you can still be targeted by a scam related to the outage: Watch out for people reaching out who are pretending to represent a company or government agency you’ve done business with. They may claim their systems were or are down and need to confirm your personal information. If this happens, do not give it to them, no matter how legitimate and convincing they may sound, especially if they’re asking for sensitive information like your date of birth, home address, and/or Social Security number.
If you’re still unsure if you did the right thing after you hang up, call the company directly at the number found on its website. Don’t call numbers that pop up in Internet search results, the one that appeared on your caller ID or the phone numbers included in the email or text sent to you.
The CrowdStrike outage reportedly affected more than 8 million computers worldwide. The company has a remediation page for any businesses still recovering from the outage that is quite thorough and includes details of what happened last Friday and explains what they’ve done to make sure another similar outage never happens again.
