Global IT outage is ‘closest we’ve come to a digital apocalypse’ as experts fear world on the brink of mass cyberattack
THE global IT outage has been likened to the long-fabled ‘digital apocalypse’, a scenario that would see the world disconnect completely from the internet.
When the incident occurred last Friday, 911 services were disrupted in some states, planes were grounded, media broadcasts taken offline, GPs unable to see patients, and people unable to make Visa card payments.
“It’s definitely the closest we’ve ever come to a digital apocalypse,” Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at ESET, told The Sun.
“If you’d asked me this last week, I would have laughed at anyone who would have said that this was possible.
“But it comes back to the old adage of: expect the unexpected.”
Moore pointed to Black Mirror-esque films like Leave the World Behind, which he said give us a “look into what the future could potentially hold”.
He added: “But… it never really was assumed possible that we’d ever come close.”
Seeing what was possible from just one faulty CrowdStrike security update has made the threat of a widespread cyberattack – or internet-killing solar flare – all the more concerning.
“To see something like 8.5million devices knocked offline simultaneously, that’s what we’ve never experienced before,” Moore continued.
“Which made it feel like this is potentially now a real threat that cyber attackers could attempt to manipulate or attack.”
What is CrowdStrike?
THE global cyber outage affecting TV channels, banks, hospitals, airports and emergency services related to an issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
IT security firm CrowdStrike ran a recorded phone message on Friday, 19 July – saying it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to its Falcon sensor.
A prerecorded message said: “Thanks for contacting CrowdStrike support. CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows… related to the Falcon sensor.”
The Falcon system monitors the computers it is installed on and detects hacks and bugs before responding to them.
CrowdStrike, headquartered in Austin, Texas, says it is a global security leader which provides an advanced platform to protect data.
A CrowdStrike update on Friday is said to have caused a critical error in Microsoft operating systems, affecting millions worldwide.
The company regularly updates systems with new anti-virus software
Toby Murray, associate professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne, Australia said: “If Falcon is suffering a malfunction then it could be causing a widespread outage for two reasons .
“One: Falcon is widely deployed on many computers, and two: because of Falcon’s privileged nature.
“Falcon is a bit like anti-virus software: it is regularly updated with information about the latest online threats.
“It is possible that today’s outage may have been caused by a buggy update to Falcon.”.
Cyber expert Troy Hunt told Australian TV network Seven: “It looks like they’ve pushed a bad update, which is presently nuking every machine that takes it.
Dr Erisa Karafili, associate professor at the University of Southampton’s cybersecurity research group, said the incident gave the world “a small taster of what can happen”.
She added: “It teaches us that we need to be very conscious of the world where we are living.
“Interconnectivity comes with the threat of cyberattacks and systems issues.
“There should not be this illusion of security.”
However, the main worry is for simultaneous attacks to take place, instead of just a singular hit.
“That actually makes it unlikely,” Moore reassured. “Because you would need such high level – God-level – access into so many different organisations to then strike at once.”
A communications wipe out, as shown in Leave the World Behind, where emergency services, mobile phones and navigation are all taken offline is the biggest worry.
Fortunately, this nightmare scenario is incredibly hard to execute.
“For all of those to be simultaneously targeted and brought down successfully at the same time still remains unlikely,” Moore concluded.
“However, I like to be positive in everything that happens.”