Cyber criminals cash in on global IT outage

THE GLOBAL IT outage could open the door for cyber criminals hoping to cash in on confusion and uncertainty, experts have warned.

- Marco Giannangeli

It follows reports of a surge in adverts on social media platforms and in email inboxes promising to "fix" issues caused by CrowdStrike's faulty antivirus update on Friday.

One advert posted by a scammer read simply: "Is your computer affected by CrowdStrike? We can help you fix it for $200."

Others have already begun to set up fake "CrowdStrike support" domain names to hook in the company's customers and anyone who might be affected by the chaos.

The outage left the world reeling, with planes grounded, GP surgeries unable to deal with appointments and contactless payment unavailable at tills and petrol pumps.