Watch for scams related to global computer outage

INDIANAPOLIS — As banks, airlines, and hospitals are still recovering from Friday’s outage, which disrupted business and travel worldwide, government cybersecurity agencies and the CEO of Crowdstrike are warning everyone about new phishing schemes related to the outage.

According to the warnings, bad guys are posing as Crowdstrike employees and other IT specialists, offering to help you recover from the outage. The emails contain links that could either directly infect your computer or device with malware or take you to a bogus Crowdstrike or Microsoft website, where you’ll have to enter sensitive information, which can lead to identity theft.

“We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said in a statement . “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives.”

The good news for you and me is that we can probably ignore all of this. According to Scamicide , the Crowdstrike Falcon EDR software that contained the glitch is generally used by big organizations like banks, airlines, and hospitals.  It’s not something that individuals like you and me typically have on our computers.  And while the ripple effects were huge, Microsoft says less than 1% of Microsoft computers were directly affected by the glitch in the software.

So, if you get one of these emails about recovering from the outage, you can likely just delete it.

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