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Security advisories

Potential Threats Stemming from CrowdStrike Outage

July 19, 2024 | 2 MINS READ

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THE THREAT

On July 19th, 2024, a software update released by CrowdStrike led to widespread outages across the globe. This update caused a critical conflict with Windows OS, leading to system instability and crashes; specifically, the update inadvertently caused errors in the kernel mode driver, a core component of the Windows operating system, resulting in systems crashing to a "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD). This has resulted in operational disruptions in various sectors including aviation, banking, IT, and other critical infrastructure.

Shortly following the announcement of the issue, eSentire identified suspicious domains that impersonated CrowdStrike support domains. These fraudulent sites aim to deceive users into believing they are accessing legitimate CrowdStrike support resources, potentially leading to further security incidents.

What we’re doing about it

What you should do about it

Additional information

In tech alert to customers as well as in a public statement, CrowdStrike confirmed:

Additionally, CrowdStrike provided the following workarounds to resolve the issue.

Workaround Steps for individual hosts:

Note: Bitlocker-encrypted hosts may require a recovery key.

Additional Workaround for individual hosts:

Customers should restart the impacted host multiple times, forcing a race condition where the channel file which is impacting the issue, will be updated.

Workaround Steps for public cloud or similar environment including virtual:

Option 1:

Option 2:

Appendix

Figure 1: Example of Fraudulent Domain Capitalizing on CrowdStrike Outage

References:

[1] https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/statement-on-falcon-content-update-for-windows-hosts/
[2] https://x.com/George_Kurtz/status/1814235001745027317
[3] https://x.com/George_Kurtz/status/1814316045185822981

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