In all seriousness, let's review the facts of the #CrowdStrike situation:

As reported across global news outlets and the internets today, a security company called CrowdStrike caused some chaos. There are cascading impacts across many industries.

We are already seeing external impacts:
 courier service delays (UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc.)
 flight delays/cancellations at the airport
 small business closing for the day
 websites being inaccessible
 hospitals cancelling surgeries/treatments
 municipalities being closed
 government services being delayed
among many other cascading effects that could last days.

While a major inconvenience, the bug has already been resolved within CrowdStrike's system. Recovery will be slow and tedious, especially for larger networks, but the world will recover from this.

What happened? As is being reported, a bug introduced during a routine update of their Falcon EDR software (anti-virus software run by millions and millions of customers) caused what is known as a kernel panic within the Windows operating system - we are seeing this manifest as a "bugcheck error" (aka - the Blue Screen Of Death , or #BSOD) on Windows machines. It does not affect #Apple or #Linux devices. Note: It is NOT a #Microsoft problem.

How can we prevent this? Short answer, WE as users can't. However, this isn't the first time a large global tech vendor has caused major outages across the globe, and it won't be the last.

This is a good example of why you should backup your critical data frequently: whether to an external device, or a cloud storage facility (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.). You should do this personally as often as you feel is necessary.

For my enterprise admins reading this, I hope you have a solid (and tested) backup methodology in place.

#StayCyberSecure #BeCyberAware

And awaaayyy we go! #5Ghoul is a collection of 14 vulnerabilities that affect #5G modems from a small collection of vendors, which also affect 714 phone models from a dozen manufacturers. We're looking at #DoS attacks and #Downgrade attacks against cell networks and devices running the at-risk #firmware. If properly exploited, I see a cascading effect of failure for personal phones and IoT devices alike, and cell tower modems, resulting in a complete breakdown of #CriticalInfrastructure. Talk about potential for #MassChaos.

Remember, most countries on our planet rely heavily on cellular networks rather than landlines anymore for pretty much everything, including emergency alert systems and OTA data transmission.

I recommend you #CheckForUodates regularly on your phones and tablets to ensure you can be as protected as possible from this, and the millions of other threats, that are circulating out there.

#DontGetPhished #BeCyberAware #StayCyberSecure #CyberWarfare #Hacking

https://thehackernews.com/2023/12/new-5g-modems-flaws-affect-ios-devices.html