‘Self-inflicted:’ UNF cyber security expert weighs in on CrowdStrike cyber incident

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A local cybersecurity expert is weighing in on the CrowdStrike cyber incident that caused various business, government, and public safety systems to crash Friday.

Impacts from the CrowdStrike cyber incident have been felt not only all over the U.S. but the entire globe.

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“They put out a statement that their systems were compromised, but this was not a cyber security attack,” Dr. Zornitza Prodanoff, Interim Director of UNF’s School of Computing, said.

Prodanoff said while CrowdStrike has announced this incident was the result of a glitch in a software update, she would still consider this incident as detrimental as a cyber attack, due to the real-world impacts and harms it has likely caused.

“CrowdStrike basically self-inflicted this problem because they did an update on Falcon. As a result, some of the machines were rendered completely down. You can imagine the havoc that this can create,” Prodanoff said.

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She said with around 30,000 clients throughout the world, it’s no surprise such a wide array of entities were impacted.

Prodanoff added the scramble to fix the issues could provide an opportunity for hackers, who may be watching to gather intel, should they consider mounting an attack on CrowdStrike systems in the future.

“They may monitor the situation of when those systems will be back up and running. This can tell an attacker how long the response time would be to deal with that,” Prodanoff said.

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Prodanoff said while she can’t predict exactly when this mess will be fully cleaned up, based on the size and scope of CrowdStrike’s resources, she expects it will be sooner rather than later.

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