The 19 July Microsoft outage has caused a surge in opportunistic cyber criminals taking advantage of the situation, according to security agencies. Despite the outage not being a result of malicious activity, organisations are advised to remain vigilant. Phishing attempts referencing the outage have already been observed, prompting warnings from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Australian Cyber Security Centre. Financially motivated threat actors are expected to launch targeted attacks in the coming days and weeks, including phishing campaigns and social engineering tactics. CrowdStrike has confirmed fake updates circulating, including a malicious ZIP archive containing a remote access Trojan. To avoid falling victim to these opportunistic exploits, organisations are urged to strictly follow official remediation advice and communicate with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.
Watch out for scammers posing as NCSC agents offering CrowdStrike services
