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SUNDAY SCIENCE: MASSIVE IT OUTAGE SPOTLIGHTS MAJOR VULNERABILITIES IN
THE GLOBAL INFORMATION ECOSYSTEM  
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Richard Forno
July 19, 2024
The Conversation
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_ The outage is emblematic of the way organizational networks, cloud
computing services and the internet are interdependent, and the
vulnerabilities this creates. _

Displays at LaGuardia Airport in New York show the infamous “blue
screen of death., AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura

 

The global information technology outage
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on July 19, 2024, that paralyzed organizations ranging from airlines
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to hospitals
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and even the delivery of uniforms
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for the Olympic Games represents a growing concern for cybersecurity
professionals, businesses and governments.

The outage is emblematic of the way organizational networks, cloud
computing services and the internet are interdependent, and the
vulnerabilities this creates. In this case, a faulty automatic update
to the widely used Falcon cybersecurity software from CrowdStrike
caused PCs running Microsoft’s Windows operating system to crash
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Unfortunately, many servers and PCs need to be fixed manually, and
many of the affected organizations have thousands of them spread
around the world.

For Microsoft, the problem was made worse
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because the company released an update to its Azure cloud computing
platform at roughly the same time as the CrowdStrike update.
Microsoft, CrowdStrike and other companies like Amazon have issued
technical work-arounds for customers willing to take matters into
their own hands. But for the vast majority of global users, especially
companies, this isn’t going to be a quick fix.

Modern technology incidents, whether cyberattacks or technical
problems, continue to paralyze the world in new and interesting ways.
Massive incidents like the CrowdStrike update fault not only create
chaos in the business world
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but disrupt global society itself. The economic losses resulting from
such incidents – lost productivity, recovery, disruption to business
and individual activities – are likely to be extremely high.

As a former cybersecurity professional and current security researcher
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world may finally be realizing that modern information-based society
is based on a very fragile foundation.

[A display screen shows numerous rows of text]
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The outage led to thousands of flight delays on July 19, 2024. AP
Photo/Yuki Iwamura
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The bigger picture

Interestingly, on June 11, 2024, a post on CrowdStrike’s own blog
seemed to predict this very situation
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– the global computing ecosystem compromised by one vendor’s
faulty technology – though they probably didn’t expect that their
product would be the cause.

Software supply chains have long been a serious cybersecurity concern
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and potential single point of failure. Companies like CrowdStrike,
Microsoft, Apple and others have direct, trusted access into
organizations’ and individuals’ computers. As a result, people
have to trust that the companies are not only secure themselves, but
that the products and updates they push out are well-tested and robust
before they’re applied to customers’ systems. The SolarWinds
incident
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of 2019, which involved hacking the software supply chain, may well be
considered a preview of today’s CrowdStrike incident.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said “this is not a security incident
or cyberattack
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that “the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been
deployed.” While perhaps true from CrowdStrike’s perspective –
they were not hacked – it doesn’t mean the effects of this
incident won’t create security problems for customers. It’s quite
possible that in the short term, organizations may disable some of
their internet security devices
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get ahead of the problem, but in doing so they may have opened
themselves up to criminals penetrating their networks
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It’s also likely that people will be targeted by various scams
preying on user panic or ignorance regarding the issue. Overwhelmed
users might either take offers of faux assistance that lead to
identity theft, or throw away money on bogus solutions to this
problem.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explains the effects of the
outage on airlines and other transportation systems.

What to do

Organizations and users will need to wait until a fix is available
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or try to recover on their own if they have the technical ability
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After that, I believe there are several things to do and consider as
the world recovers from this incident.

Companies will need to ensure that the products and services they use
are trustworthy. This means doing due diligence on the vendors of such
products for security and resilience. Large organizations typically
test any product upgrades and updates
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them to be released to their internal users, but for some routine
products like security tools, that may not happen.

Governments and companies alike will need to emphasize resilience
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in designing networks and systems. This means taking steps to avoid
creating single points of failure in infrastructure, software and
workflows that an adversary could target or a disaster could make
worse. It also means knowing whether any of the products organizations
depend on are themselves dependent on certain other products or
infrastructures to function.

Organizations will need to renew their commitment to best practices in
cybersecurity
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IT management. For example, having a robust backup system in place can
make recovery from such incidents easier and minimize data loss.
Ensuring appropriate policies, procedures, staffing and technical
resources is essential.

Problems in the software supply chain like this make it difficult to
follow the standard IT recommendation to always keep your systems
patched and current. Unfortunately, the costs of not keeping systems
regularly updated now have to be weighed against the risks of a
situation like this happening again.[The Conversation]

Richard Forno
[[link removed]], Principal
Lecturer in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, _University
of Maryland, Baltimore County
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This article is republished from The Conversation
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the original article
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Biologist Rosemary Grant: ‘Evolution Happens Much Quicker Than
Darwin Thought’
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Zoë Corbyn
The Guardian
July 21, 2024

* Science
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* Technology
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* Internet
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* cybersecurity
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* Microsoft
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* CrowdStrike
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