Organizations should expect to see phishing attacks exploiting the global IT outage that occurred last Friday, the Business Post reports.
I recently wrote my thoughts about the outage that was caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update that was extremely disruptive globally. The outage was caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update that crashed Windows systems, disrupting airlines, banks, hospitals, governments, and businesses around the world.
Peter Oakes, a former Central Bank enforcement director and founder of Fintech Ireland, told the Post that criminals will almost certainly take advantage of the chaos to trick users into making unwise decisions.
“This outage is ripe for scammers and criminals flooding emails and texts pretending to be from reputable financial services companies,” Oakes said. “Expect to see emails and text informing you that due to the outage your data has been compromised or that someone is trying to spend your money.”
Attackers will likely impersonate banks and other financial institutions to trick users into handing over their login credentials or financial information.
“Those impersonating banks, investment managers, or fintechs will inform you to go to a new website to reconfirm your financial details or your account will be locked,” Oakes explained.
“You might be told to ignore the unusual look and feel of the recovery site as it was thrown up in quick response to the outage and to ensure that your assets are locked down as quickly as possible to - ironically – protect you from criminals. Among all the confusion and news alerts, you would have to expect many people will be caught out. After all, it is literally a numbers game.”
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