1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:02,120
Speaker 1: Parts of the world came to a stop on Friday

2
00:00:02,160 --> 00:00:05,600
Speaker 1: night when computer systems crashed, leaving people looking an error

3
00:00:05,600 --> 00:00:09,320
Speaker 1: message known as the Blue Screen of Death. Flights were grounded,

4
00:00:09,360 --> 00:00:13,040
Speaker 1: payment systems were down, street lights in Levin were turned off.

5
00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:17,680
Speaker 1: Had just Livin or or the other places too? Presumably

6
00:00:18,520 --> 00:00:21,440
Speaker 1: it was all caused by an update to Microsoft devices

7
00:00:21,480 --> 00:00:24,400
Speaker 1: issued by the tech company crowd Strike, whose shares have

8
00:00:24,440 --> 00:00:28,320
Speaker 1: since plummeted. It expert and Rush Digital founder done to Abassia,

9
00:00:28,440 --> 00:00:31,640
Speaker 1: is with me now done a good morning? How they

10
00:00:31,720 --> 00:00:34,879
Speaker 1: say that this affected only one percent of Microsoft's computers

11
00:00:34,880 --> 00:00:37,360
Speaker 1: and yet it seems to have have had a huge

12
00:00:37,640 --> 00:00:41,040
Speaker 1: impact on, you know, lots of different parts of the world.

13
00:00:42,240 --> 00:00:46,960
Speaker 2: Why is that, Yeah, it's it's because a lot of

14
00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:51,720
Speaker 2: server software, a lot of service systems actually support many

15
00:00:51,760 --> 00:00:57,360
Speaker 2: many users. So the Microsoft Azure cloud was affected by this,

16
00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:01,400
Speaker 2: which is why so many of online services went out.

17
00:01:01,480 --> 00:01:04,480
Speaker 2: And if you think about banking servers, you know they

18
00:01:04,560 --> 00:01:07,480
Speaker 2: might only have a couple of servers, but it serves

19
00:01:07,560 --> 00:01:09,800
Speaker 2: their entire customer bass right, So if you have if

20
00:01:09,800 --> 00:01:12,080
Speaker 2: you take out a few of these machines, they cause

21
00:01:12,160 --> 00:01:13,080
Speaker 2: these kinds of outages.

22
00:01:13,400 --> 00:01:15,920
Speaker 1: So that that statistic that they put out saying it's

23
00:01:16,040 --> 00:01:18,319
Speaker 1: I don't worry, it's only one percent. That actually it's

24
00:01:18,360 --> 00:01:19,200
Speaker 1: not the full picture.

25
00:01:19,240 --> 00:01:22,160
Speaker 2: Really. Yeah, there's a bit of spin on that, right,

26
00:01:22,280 --> 00:01:25,160
Speaker 2: Like they're not really talking about how many people had

27
00:01:25,160 --> 00:01:27,920
Speaker 2: affected that that would be one percent, right, they said,

28
00:01:27,920 --> 00:01:31,039
Speaker 2: they're just talking about purely computer systems, which I don't

29
00:01:31,040 --> 00:01:32,720
Speaker 2: think is a really fair metric.

30
00:01:32,959 --> 00:01:36,880
Speaker 1: Using could it happen again? And could cyber criminals do

31
00:01:37,080 --> 00:01:39,800
Speaker 1: exactly what they have done? I mean, if I was

32
00:01:39,840 --> 00:01:41,680
Speaker 1: a cyber criminal, I'd be looking at what happened on

33
00:01:41,720 --> 00:01:43,920
Speaker 1: Friday and I'd be thinking, right, how can I do that?

34
00:01:45,440 --> 00:01:47,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's a it's a pretty interesting point. I think.

35
00:01:48,320 --> 00:01:51,080
Speaker 2: One thing that is, I guess leaked as you know,

36
00:01:51,120 --> 00:01:54,559
Speaker 2: the intelligence with what they call intelligence, but basically cyber

37
00:01:54,640 --> 00:01:57,120
Speaker 2: criminals knowing what kind of software you're running. It's kind

38
00:01:57,120 --> 00:01:59,040
Speaker 2: of like knowing what kind of lock you've got on

39
00:01:59,080 --> 00:02:01,880
Speaker 2: your door, and if there's a vulnerability about that lock,

40
00:02:02,040 --> 00:02:04,160
Speaker 2: you know they're going to be using that. There have

41
00:02:04,240 --> 00:02:09,639
Speaker 2: been reports of fishing and sort of cybersecurity scams already

42
00:02:10,120 --> 00:02:14,680
Speaker 2: pretending to be you know, support staff from CrowdStrike and

43
00:02:14,760 --> 00:02:17,720
Speaker 2: Microsoft and other vendors that were involved in the outage,

44
00:02:18,360 --> 00:02:21,120
Speaker 2: So yeah, absolutely spot on. You know, cybercriminals doing what

45
00:02:21,200 --> 00:02:24,239
Speaker 2: side of cernels do best, I guess. Yeah.

46
00:02:24,320 --> 00:02:26,720
Speaker 1: And interestingly, China dodged a bullet on all of this

47
00:02:26,840 --> 00:02:28,239
Speaker 1: because they don't use CrowdStrike.

48
00:02:29,320 --> 00:02:32,360
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think that you'd probably refer to that

49
00:02:32,400 --> 00:02:35,240
Speaker 2: as some kind of unintended side effect of not trusting

50
00:02:35,240 --> 00:02:41,400
Speaker 2: American technology companies. But it does demonstrate, you know, there

51
00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:44,800
Speaker 2: there's definitely been a failure from CrowdStrike to properly test

52
00:02:44,880 --> 00:02:48,160
Speaker 2: their software before sending it out. That's evident because if

53
00:02:48,200 --> 00:02:50,880
Speaker 2: it affected eight point five million machines, it's really hard

54
00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:53,440
Speaker 2: to believe that, you know, the test team couldn't reproduce

55
00:02:53,480 --> 00:02:56,280
Speaker 2: it in their lab before releasing it. So I think

56
00:02:56,360 --> 00:02:58,679
Speaker 2: crowdstrikes in for a world are hurt in terms of

57
00:02:58,720 --> 00:03:00,560
Speaker 2: lawsuits and liabilities.

58
00:03:00,120 --> 00:03:03,800
Speaker 1: Absolutely, especially when you've got especially when you've got emergency

59
00:03:03,840 --> 00:03:07,160
Speaker 1: services lines down as a result of it as well. Danu,

60
00:03:07,240 --> 00:03:09,000
Speaker 1: thank you very much for your time this morning. Always

61
00:03:09,040 --> 00:03:11,840
Speaker 1: appreciate your insight. That's done to Abassiria. He's the IT

62
00:03:12,320 --> 00:03:14,240
Speaker 1: expert and Rush Digital founder.

63
00:03:14,560 --> 00:03:17,640
Speaker 2: It's for more from News Talks ed B listen live

64
00:03:17,840 --> 00:03:20,560
Speaker 2: on air or online and keep our shows with you

65
00:03:20,639 --> 00:03:23,600
Speaker 2: wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio,