As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain.

Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and even CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage.

“We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said.

“I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives.”

The UK Cyber Security Centre said it had noticed an increase in phishing attempts around this event.

Australia’s Cyber Security Minister, Clare O’Neil, also issued a statement warning people to be careful about any texts or emails offering to help following the outage.

“We are still seeing examples of the scams and phishing that I discussed yesterday,” she wrote on X.

“Examples that have been reported include people posed as airlines offering to resolve issues with delayed flights and criminals posing as technical support offering to fix affected technology.”

It is very important that Australians are extremely cautious of any unexpected texts, calls or emails claiming to be assistance with this issue. You can help by making sure vulnerable people, including elderly relatives, are being extra cautious at this time.

— Clare O’Neil MP (@ClareONeilMP) July 21, 2024

Meanwhile, Microsoft has confirmed nearly 8.5 million of its devices were affected.

“We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one per cent of all Windows machines,” Microsoft said in a blog.

The outage triggered systems problems that grounded flights, forced broadcasters off air and left customers without access to services such as healthcare or banking.

“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 in its blog post.

CrowdStrike has helped develop a solution that will help Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix, Microsoft said. It said it was working with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, sharing information about the effects Microsoft was seeing across the industry.

The air travel industry was recovering on Saturday from the outage that caused thousands of flights to be cancelled, leaving passengers stranded or grappling with hours of delays as airports and airlines were caught up.

Delta Air Lines, one of the hardest-hit airlines, said on Saturday, more than 600 flights had been cancelled, adding that additional cancellations were expected.

-with AAP