Global Experts Warn About Post-Outage Scams

The CrowdStrike-caused computer outage has created an opportunity for cybercriminals, experts around the world are warning. "Malicious websites and unofficial code are being released claiming to help entities recover," Australia's cybersecurity agency said on Saturday. The warning urged customers to accept updates and technical information only from CrowdStrike, Politico Europe reports. The UK's National Cyber Security Center earlier said it's receiving increased reports of phishing attempts connected to the outage. CrowdStrike posted its own warning Saturday about a malicious ZIP file being distributed, especially to customers in Latin America.

Secureworks researchers have seen a rise in the number of CrowdStrike-themed domain registrations, per the BBC. Such legitimate-looking websites can trick users into revealing private information or downloading malicious software. Microsoft on Saturday provided an estimate of the number of Windows devices that were affected by the outage Friday: 8.5 million. A company blog post said that's less than 1% of all Windows machines, per Politico. "While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services," Microsoft said. (More outage stories.)