Information Technology Security

By Ionut Ilascu,  Bleeping Computer A faulty component in the latest CrowdStrike Falcon update is crashing Windows systems, impacting various organizations and services across the world, including airports, TV stations, and hospitals. The glitch is affecting Windows workstations and servers, with users reporting massive outages that took offline entire companies and fleets of hundreds of thousands of computers. According to some reports, emergency services in the U.S. and Canada have also been impacted. Worldwide outage By the time of the correction, though, many large organizations across multiple verticals had already been affected. Some reports say that CrowdStrike’s update impacted some 911 emergency service agencies in the state of New York (EMS, police, fire department), Alaska, and Arizona, as well as 911 services in parts of Canada. A 911 telecommunicator in Illinois said that they were “working off of paper until things come back.” There also reports that the health hotlin...

By John Besley, Bloomberg Critical infrastructure organizations within the UK have been urged to ramp up their cyber security defenses as they face a heightened risk of Russian state-sponsored cyber attacks. An alert issued by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which consists of the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, has warned the Russian government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks against critical organizations such as the NHS, nuclear power stations and parts of the civil service. According to the alert, "evolving intelligence" suggests hackers within the Russian government are seeking to engage in "malicious cyber activity" in response to the "unprecedented economic sanctions" imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. There is also concern that hackers are targeting critical infrastructure in countries that have provided "materiel support" to Ukrainian forces. There are also risks posed by nu...