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      Scams Tied to the CrowdStrike Crash Have Bloomed. Here’s How to Stay Safe

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      People posing as airline customer service representatives may be making fraudulent attempts to access your money or private data, experts warn.In the hours after the American cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike deployed a flawed software update that crippled critical businesses and services around the world, scammers pounced.Government agencies and businesses have warned that the panic caused by the CrowdStrike crash on Friday has given criminals an opening to take advantage of customers who are looking to reschedule flights, access banking information or fix their technology.Here are some ways to guard against the fraudulent schemes.Scammers see an opportunity.CrowdStrike provides cybersecurity for some 70 percent of Fortune 100 companies, so the crash led to widespread failures that grounded planes, crippled businesses, disrupted 911 emergency systems and delayed banking transactions.Thieves online are using the confusion to carry out a variety of scams, including phishing attempts, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said. The National Cyber Security Center in the United Kingdom issued a similar statement noting that an “increase in phishing referencing this outage has already been observed.”Scammers may look to get your money immediately by offering a product like a bogus plane ticket. But they could also be after personal identifying data that would allow them to access your finances in the future.What industries are being targeted?Because grounded planes caused frustrated customers to look to reschedule their flights, travel has been particularly subject to schemers, said Anton Dahbura, the executive director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Counting the Costs of the Microsoft-CrowdStrike Outage

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      A “historic” tech failure alarmed investors, after a security update caused problems for Microsoft devices and services, and took down businesses worldwide.A major IT outage involving Microsoft and CrowdStrike has caused major delays at airports around the world.Clemens Bilan/EPA, via ShutterstockThe glitch felt around the world Grounded flights, emergency services unreachable, payment systems not functioning — the world is assessing the damage caused by a cascade of IT outages that is spooking investors and grinding many businesses and government services to a halt.“This outage is historic in scale,” Mikko Hypponen, a research specialist at the software company WithSecure and a cybercrime adviser to Europol, told DealBook.The problem is being attributed to a tech upgrade gone wrong. All eyes are on CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company. It issued a software update that is causing Microsoft systems, including its Azure cloud service, to crash or not function properly. George Kurtz, the C.E.O. of CrowdStrike, said on X that a fix is being deployed, adding it’s “not a security incident or cyberattack.”Here’s the latest: American, United and Delta had grounded flights, according to the F.A.A. Airlines in Europe and Asia, including Air France-KLM and Japan Airlines, also had reported delays or cancellations. Some had reported a partial return to service.Long queues of airline passengers could be seen at airports around the world, with some resorting to manual check-in. In France, the television networks TF1 and Canal+ told the public on X that they could not go on the air on Friday morning. Comcast’s Sky News in the U.K. also went dark for a spell.The incident points to how reliant the global economy is on a handful of major tech companies to run vital infrastructure. CrowdStrike, a major cybersecurity vendor, is taking the brunt of the hit. Its stock was down nearly 12 percent in premarket trading. Microsoft was down about 1.4 percent, and also said a resolution was forthcoming.Security has become a big focus in the cloud wars. Google is trying to bolster its cloud operations with an eye on cybersecurity. The company is in talks to buy Wiz, a New York-based cybersecurity firm, in what would be its biggest acquisition ever, and an effort to take market share from Microsoft.Expect tough questions about the business world’s computing systems. Financial regulators in the U.K. have already begun speaking with financial services companies to learn the extent of the damage on banks and payment companies, The Financial Times reports.In other IT news: A U.S. judge dismissed most claims against SolarWinds, an IT security company, and its chief information security officer; the S.E.C. had sued the company after it was hacked by Russian agents in 2020.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Google Close to Its Biggest Acquisition Ever, Despite Antitrust Scrutiny

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      The search giant’s negotiations to buy Wiz, a cybersecurity start-up, for $23 billion, come as the Biden administration has taken a hard line against consolidation in tech and other industries.Google, which became one of the world’s the most valuable companies through its search engine and other consumer internet services, is nearing its largest-ever acquisition to improve what it can offer to business customers.Google is in talks to buy Wiz, a New York-based cybersecurity start-up, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions, who were not authorized to discuss them. Wiz was last valued at $12 billion.The companies have valued the deal at roughly $23 billion, said one of the people, easily making it Google’s most expensive acquisition and nearly double what the company paid for Motorola Mobility in 2012.While a deal looks likely, talks could still fall apart, the people said.Google and Wiz did not respond to requests for comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that the companies were discussing a deal.Google has moved forward with negotiations despite the possibility that regulators might try to block the deal. But the company may be willing to fight to beef up its cloud-computing division, which lags behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.Google was sued by the Justice Department in two separate antitrust cases, one targeting its ubiquitous search engine and another seeking to break up its digital advertising-technology business. A verdict in the search case is expected this summer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Are You an AT&T Customer? Here’s What to Know About the Data Breach

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      Nearly all AT&T customers were affected by a recent cyberattack.Nearly all customers of the telecommunications company AT&T were affected by a cyberattack that exposed phone records of calls and texts from May 2022 through October 2022, and on Jan. 2, 2023, the company said Friday.Although the company said the breach did not expose the contents of calls or texts or information such as Social Security numbers, passwords or other personally identifiable information, the information that was exposed can still threaten customers’ security.If you are an AT&T customer, here is what you need to know about the breach.How do I know if my records were exposed?AT&T will contact you by text, email or U.S. mail if your account was affected by the cyberattack, the company said.But AT&T also said that “nearly all” customers had been affected by the breach. So if you were a customer from May 1, 2022, to Oct. 31, 2022, or on Jan. 2, 2023, your phone logs were most likely exposed.What was exposed?The phone numbers that you texted and called, as well as how frequently you interacted with them, were exposed by the breach, the company said.Customers’ personal details, such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth, were not exposed. Nor were the contents of the calls and texts. Although customers’ names were not exposed by the breach, “there are often ways to find a name associated with a phone number using publicly available online tools,” AT&T said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Germany to Strip Huawei From Its 5G Networks

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      Major telecom companies agreed to stop using critical components made by Chinese companies in their mobile infrastructure by 2029.The German government said on Thursday that it had reached an agreement with major telecom companies to have them stop using critical Huawei and ZTE components in their 5G mobile infrastructure in five years, the latest step by a European country to ban Chinese companies from critical telecommunications infrastructure.“We are protecting the central nervous system of the German economy — and we are protecting the communication of citizens, companies and the state,” Nancy Faeser, the interior minister, said in a news conference in Berlin on Thursday.The agreement with the telecom companies — Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica — comes in two steps. First, use of Chinese-made critical components will be discontinued from core parts of the country’s 5G networks by the end of 2026. Then, the parts made by Chinese manufacturers will be phased out from antennas, transmission lines and towers by the end of 2029.Huawei and ZTE did not respond to requests for comment.Germany, which accounts for roughly a quarter of mobile customers in the European Union , is highly dependent on the Chinese export market and has long delayed taking such a drastic step against Chinese firms. Instead it has chosen to certify components based on a case-by-case security check.Other European countries such as Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania have already instituted bans on Huawei and ZTE components. The United States has restricted the use of Huawei equipment since at least 2019.In presenting the arrangement, Ms. Faeser reiterated that it was based on negotiations with German telecom providers. Those providers had long argued that switching from Huawei and ZTE components too quickly would be complicated and expensive.The question of banning Huawei and ZTE from German mobile infrastructure has been discussed in Berlin since the previous government, headed by Angela Merkel, but the decision announced on Thursday comes after an extensive security assessment, said Ms. Faeser.“The current threat situation underlines the importance of a secure and resilient telecommunications infrastructure, especially in view of the dangers of sabotage and espionage,” she said.Adam Satariano More

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      The Aftermath of a U.K. Cyberattack: Blood Shortages and Delayed Operations

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      Several London hospitals, still reeling from a cyberattack last week, have made an urgent plea to medical students to help stem the disruption.Several London hospitals, still under significant strain more than a week after a cyberattack crippled services, have asked medical students to volunteer to help minimize disruption, as thousands of blood samples have had to be discarded and operations postponed.The ransomware attack on Synnovis, a private firm that analyzes blood tests, has crippled services at two major National Health Service hospital trusts, Guy’s and St. Thomas’ and King’s College, which described the situation as “critical.”According to a memo leaked in recent days, several London hospitals asked medical students to volunteer for 10- to 12-hour shifts. “We urgently need volunteers to step forward and support our pathology services,” said the message, which was reported earlier by the BBC. “The ripple effect of this extremely serious incident is felt across various hospital, community and mental health services in our region.”The attack also disrupted blood transfusions, and the N.H.S. appealed to the public this week for blood donors with O-negative blood types, which can be used in transfusions for any blood type, and O-positive blood types, which is the most frequently occurring blood type, saying it could not match patients’ blood at the same frequency as usual.While the N.H.S. has declined to comment on which group was suspected of carrying out the attack, Ciaran Martin, a former head of British cybersecurity, told the BBC last week that a Russian cybercriminal group known as Qilin was most likely the perpetrator. Synnovis said last week in a statement that it was working with the British government’s National Cyber Security Center to understand what had happened.Synnovis, in an email sent Monday to primary health providers, said that thousands of blood test samples would probably have to be destroyed because of the lack of connectivity to electronic health records. In a statement on Wednesday, Synnovis said that the I.T. system had been down for too long for samples taken last week to be processed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ticketmaster Confirms Data Breach. Here’s What to Know.

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      The hacking group ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility for stealing the user information of more than 500 million Ticketmaster customers.Ticketmaster confirmed in a federal filing on Friday that it was investigating a data breach after a hacking group known as ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for stealing the information of more than 500 million Ticketmaster customers.In the filing, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, said it had “identified unauthorized activity within a third-party cloud database environment.”Who is behind the breach?ShinyHunters, a hacker group believed to have been formed around 2020, is believed to have been behind the breach.Brett Callow, a threat analyst with the cybersecurity company Emsisoft, said it was a “credible threat actor,” though not much more was known about the group.Its chief aim appears to be to obtain personal records and sell them.Its past victims have included Microsoft and AT&T, among dozens of other companies in the United States and elsewhere, according to federal prosecutors.In March, AT&T confirmed a breach in a news release and said it had affected roughly 70 million past or present customers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Taiwan, on China’s Doorstep, Is Dealing With TikTok Its Own Way

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      The island democracy was early to ban TikTok on government phones, and the ruling party refuses to use it. But a U.S.-style ban is not under consideration.As it is in the United States, TikTok is popular in Taiwan, used by a quarter of the island’s 23 million residents.People post videos of themselves shopping for trendy clothes, dressing up as video game characters and playing pranks on their roommates. Influencers share their choreographed dances and debate whether the sticky rice dumplings are better in Taiwan’s north or south.Taiwanese users of TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese internet giant ByteDance, are also served the kind of pro-China content that the U.S. Congress cited as a reason it passed a law that could result in a ban of TikTok in America.One recent example is a video showing a Republican congressman, Rob Wittman of Virginia, stoking fears that a vote for the ruling party in Taiwan’s January election would prompt a flood of American weapons to aid the island democracy in a possible conflict with China, which claims it as part of its territory. The video was flagged as fake by a fact-checking organization, and TikTok took it down.About 80 miles from China’s coast, Taiwan is particularly exposed to the possibility of TikTok’s being used as a source of geopolitical propaganda. Taiwan has been bombarded with digital disinformation for decades, much of it traced back to China.But unlike Congress, the government in Taiwan is not contemplating legislation that could end in a ban of TikTok.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More