The CrowdStrike Microsoft outage — scammers as first responders
Scammers are organized crime today
Perhaps the biggest misconception about scammers is that they are lone-wolf organizations. They are often considered small groups of shady people working out of boiler rooms, far from it. Today’s scam operations are managed by organized crime and are usually run more effectively (albeit corruptly) than many corporate organizations.
For example, wrong-number texts may seem like innocuous errors. But they are, in fact, run by criminal organizations in third-world countries and steal billions of dollars monthly from unsuspecting victims.
The July 2024 CrowdStrike outage, which they will certainly recover from, has become a boon for scammers.
The thing about scammers is that they never let a good crisis go to waste. What is unique about the CrowdStrike outage is that it affected every industry, from travel to energy, financial services, healthcare, and more. No sector was left unaffected.
As the incident occurred on Friday morning, many people were in airports, ready to travel for the weekend. They suddenly found they couldn’t fly, and…
