Tag Archives: CrowdStrike

Is WEF plotting grid outage to reset America before election?!

Claim : WEF plots grid outage to reset America before election!

People are sharing an article (archive) by The People’s Voice (formerly NewsPunch), which claims that the WEF is plotting a catastrophic grid outage to permanently reset American before the 2024 Presidential Election!

Here is an excerpt of the (intentionally?) confusing article. Feel free to skip to the next section for the facts!

WEF Plotting ‘Catastrophic Grid Outage’ That Will ‘Permanently Reset America’ Before Election

The World Economic Forum in Davos is planning what they describe as a “catastrophic grid outage” with the stated goal of “creating a permanent reset” in the US before the November election.

According to insiders, the CrowdStrike outage was the final preparation for a devastating cyber attack on the US power grid that will disconnect the public from the internet, wipe out savings, and plunge the nation into chaos for years, allowing the elite to roll out the next phase of their totalitarian master plan.

Evil never sleeps and we are seeing Schwab’s modus operandi play out before our eyes. The WEF has infiltrated governments across the globe, with every Western nation falling under their control.

Davos has also infiltrated the corporate world, centralizing power and influence around their puppet businesses including Blackrock which owns a huge stake in CrowdStrike.

CrowdStrike, a WEF company with very close ties to the DNC and three-letter agencies, is also operating on a massive level, integrated into the grid, government, financial, transportation, and hospital systems.

Now the globalist elite have ordered a series of devastating cyber attacks and they are using WEF-afiliated companies including CrowdStrike to attack America from the inside.

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Truth : WEF is not plotting grid outage to reset America before election!

This is yet another example of fake news created / promoted by The People’s Voice, and here are the reasons why…

Fact #1 : WEF Is Not Plotting Grid Outage In America

Let me start by simply pointing out that the WEF (World Economic Forum) is not plotting any grid outage to reset America, or any other nefarious purposes, before or after the 2024 US Presidential election.

If such a plot exists, it would have been widely reported by the mainstream media, not by a well-known fake news website! In fact, it would have triggered a criminal investigation! Yet none of that happened, because… it was all made up!

Unsurprisingly, The People’s Voice article did not provide any evidence to back up its “fact checked” claim.

Fact #2 : CrowdStrike Outage Was Due To Buggy Update

The People’s Voice article claims that the CrowdStrike outage was “the final preparation for a devastating cyber attack on the US power grid”, but provided no evidence to back up its claim.

That’s likely because the CrowdStrike outage was due to a buggy driver update, and was not a cyberattack at all! In fact, the buggy driver was only pushed to Windows-based system, and did not affect CrowdStrike clients who used Linux or Mac computers.

While the threat of a cyberattack on U.S. utilities is a real possibility, it won’t be caused by a buggy driver update being issued by CrowdStrike or other software companies.

Fact #3 : CrowdStrike Outage Did Not Disrupt Electricity Supply

While the CrowdStrike outage impacted the U.S. Department of Energy, and a number of American utilities, it did not disrupt electricity supply. The outage only impacted ancillary services at those utilities (source):

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio was also experiencing issues, they said, impacting their docketing information system and call center. The City of Corpus Christi said its utility billing software and development services software, including customer portals, are both down. The Department of Energy’s website was down for a couple of hours. Avangrid subsidiary New York State Electric & Gas said its customer electricity outage information is not available due to the outage.

That’s not surprising as the CrowdStrike outage only affected Windows-based computers running its Falcon software, which would naturally only be installed in computers connected to the Internet.

Fact #4 : It Is Not Easy To Take Down Entire Power Grid

While the The People’s Voice article suggests that it would be pretty easy for nefarious parties to take down the American power grid, it isn’t simple at all.

Critical systems are air-gapped (not connected to the Internet), and American utilities have to follow the Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Reliability Standards developed by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).

American utilities therefore have separate networks, so hackers or malware gaining access to the IT network, would not be able to get to the OT (Operations Technology) network that keeps the lights on for everyone.

The Ukrainian blackout of 2015 was the first-ever confirmed case of hackers causing a power outage. But even though that cyberattack likely required months of planning, and dozens of hackers working together, the attack only affected three facilities, with the blackout only impacting 250,000 Ukrainians for just six hours (source).

Fact #5 : WEF Post Is Fake!

The cover image used in The People’s Voice article and video has a screenshot which purportedly shows the World Economic Forum posting on X (formerly Twitter) that:

The next CrowdStrike outage will result in a #PermanentReset

That is a fake screenshot, because there is no such post on X by the World Economic Forum! If the WEF actually made such a shocking post, it would have been reported by the media across the world, and mocked and criticised on social media.

But of course, that didn’t happen, because the WEF never made such a bizarre post! Why would The People’s Voice article use a fake screenshot???

Fact #6 : The People’s Voice Is Known For Fake News

The People’s Voice is the current name for NewsPunch, which possibly changed its name because its brand has been so thoroughly discredited after posting numerous shocking but fake stories.

Founded as Your News Wire in 2014, it was rebranded as NewsPunch in November 2018, before becoming The People’s Voice. A 2017 BuzzFeed report identified NewsPunch as the second-largest source of popular fake news on Facebook that year.

Its articles have been regularly debunked as fake news, so you should never share anything from NewsPunch / The People’s Voice. Here are some of its fake stories that I fact checked earlier:

Please help us FIGHT FAKE NEWS by sharing this fact check article out, and please SUPPORT our work!

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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.

He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.

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Microsoft / CrowdStrike: Who is responsible for global IT outage?

Claim : Microsoft Is Responsible For Global IT Outrage, Not CrowdStrike!

On Friday, 19 July 2024 – a day that will live in digital infamy, businesses and organisations worldwide were hit by an IT outage on their Windows-based systems. Inevitably, some people are blaming Microsoft for this debacle…

Circulating on WhatsApp : Very interesting to see how the media is playing down on the disaster.

Question remains “Not sure how microsoft is going to rollback the update or to install the patch as affected pcs have locked themselves out.”

S.L. Kanthan : Blue screens of death all over the world, from airports and ATM machines to grocery stores and even vending machines!

Thanks, Microsoft! 🤡 #outage

BRICS should create alternative operating systems. Very dangerous for the world to rely on one company.

Max Tegmark : With their impeccable safety culture, never letting things get deployed before they’re properly tested, I’m confident that ⁦@Microsoft is ready to safely handle the smarter-than-human AI that they’re trying to build with ⁦@OpenAI

Sumit Singh Rajput : This is serious! How a single tech outage can bring the world economy to its knees.

A glitch in Microsoft’s server caused a computer failure around the world. Today, everything is blue

#Microsoft #Crowdstrike #CyberSecurity #CyberAttack #airportdiaries #cyberattacks

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Truth : CrowdStrike, Not Microsoft, Is Responsible For Global IT Outrage!

This appears to be complete misunderstanding of the global IT outage that’s happening only to systems and cloud services based on Microsoft Windows, and here are the reasons why…

Fact #1 : Global IT Outage Caused By CrowdStrike, Not Microsoft

Let me start by simply pointing out that the global IT outrage that started on Friday, 19 July 2024, was caused by CrowdStrike, not Microsoft.

Soon after the outage occurred, CrowdStrike announced (and again) that it was caused by a bug in an update to its Falcon threat detection system.

The IT outage notably did not affect all Microsoft customers and users, only those who purchased and installed CrowdStrike Falcon, which is an “endpoint detection and response” software. This kind of software is designed for large organisations, and that is why this global IT outage is mainly affecting those organisations.

The scale is massive, because CrowdStrike is a leading provider of Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) software. However, home users and small business users are not affected, because they rely on the built-in Windows Defender software, or consumer-grade software from the likes of Norton and McAfee.

Blaming Microsoft for the buggy update that CrowdStrike issued would be like blaming BMW for defective third-party tyres that leak air, and asking the automotive company to replace or fix those tyres.

Fact #2 : Microsoft Denies Responsibility For Global IT Outage

A Microsoft spokesperson has officially denied responsibility for the global IT outage caused by the CrowdStrike update:

CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of IT systems globally. Microsoft does not have oversight into updates that CrowdStrike makes in its systems.

Fact #3 : Global IT Outage Caused By Bug In CrowdStrike Update

As CrowdStrike explained (and again), the infamous Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) that is caused by a bug in an update meant for Windows-based systems.

The outage was caused by a defect found in a Falcon content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This was not a cyberattack.

We are working closely with impacted customers and partners to ensure that all systems are restored, so you can deliver the services your customers rely on.

CrowdStrike further confirmed that the buggy code was introduced in a single channel file – C-00000291.sys, with the timestamp of 0409 UTC.

As former Google engineer Arpit Bhayani explained, the buggy code was trying to access an invalid memory location, triggering a panic and causing the BSOD.

I saw many engineers blaming the outage on Microsoft 🤦‍♂️ SWEs blaming without knowing the root cause is concerning.

It is not Microsoft, it is Crowdstrike who released an update for Windows that had a bug. The patch runs in Kernel mode to monitor system activity at a low level.

Because it was running in Kernel mode, the buggy code was trying to access an invalid memory location that triggered a panic and which showed Blue Screen of Death.

The name of the driver file that had the buggy update is “C-00000291.sys”, deleting it fixes the issue and unfortunately this needs to be done manually.

Microsoft has nothing to do with it.

Deleting the file, or replacing it with the previous or newer version, fixes the problem. However, it has to be done manually, as the affected computers and servers have “bricked” and cannot be remotely accessed.

Fact #4 : Microsoft Is Supposed To Vet Driver Updates

While Microsoft may not be responsible for the bug in the CrowdStrike update, some cybersecurity experts believe that it may hold some responsibility.

Costin Raiu who worked at Kaspersky for 23 years and led its threat intelligence team, says that Microsoft is supposed to vet the code and cryptographically sign it. This suggests that Microsoft may have also missed the buggy code in the CrowdStrike Falcon kernel driver update.

It’s surprising that with the extreme attention paid to driver updates, this still happened. One simple driver can bring down everything. Which is what we saw here.

Raiu also noted that past updates to Kaspersky and Microsoft’s own Windows Defender antivirus software have also triggered similar Blue Screen of Death crashes in previous years.

Please help us FIGHT FAKE NEWS by sharing this fact check article out, and please SUPPORT our work!

Please Support My Work!

Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!

Name : Adrian Wong
Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.

He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.

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How Dell Unified Workspace Simplifies IT Management!

Dell Unified Workspace – Designed To Greatly Simplify IT Management!

The goal of Dell Unified Workspace is simple – to help IT departments deliver a better end-user computing experience with less work and frustration on both sides.

IT departments have always been mired in keeping the wheels greased and the computers running, instead of actually improving the end-users’ productivity.

Dell Unified Workspace is designed to change all that, by providing a way for IT admins to automatically and intelligently assist their end-users with :

device selection and/or deployment
device security initiatives and/or maintenance
end-user service and support

Best of all, Dell Unified Workspace works no matter what mix of devices and operating systems are used. It even supports different cloud environments.

Greater Visibility + Reduced Workload

Dell Unified Workspace will allow IT departments to streamline time-consuming, complex and yet critical tasks with capabilities that provide visibility, insights and automation.

Cloud-Based PC Deployment + Management

Traditional PC lifecycle management (PCLM) is complex, expensive and does not scale to mobile and remote workers.

VMware Workspace ONE, which forms the backbone of Dell Unified Workspace, lets customers modernise how they deploy, manage and secure their Dell devices.

Once a Dell device is deployed, Workspace ONE’s unified endpoint management capabilities gives customers access to :

cloud policy management,
streamlined application delivery,
automated patching
improved device health monitoring and diagnostics

Workspace ONE also lets the user seamlessly access any native, SaaS (Software as a Service), or internal application, with a single sign-on from any device.

Data-Driven Insights In Unified Workspace

Data collected about how employees use their PCs – like battery consumption, storage utilisation, mobility requirements, and most frequently-used applications – will provide insights what each employee really needs.

This will help companies intelligently select the right PC and applications for each individual employee and ship it, preconfigured directly at a Dell factory, to the employee.

This data-driven, low-touch experience will help IT departments same time and money. It will also let users be immediately productive on powering up their new devices.

Dell estimates that this feature alone will save up to nearly a week of IT time per 1,000 devices deployed.

BIOS Security With Dell SafeBIOS

With Unified Workspace, Dell Technologies is introducing a new capability to Dell SafeBIOS – an off-host BIOS verification utility that is available as a standalone download, and also integrated with VMware Workspace ONE, Secureworks and CrowdStrike.

This new integration provides greater visibility into the integrity of the BIOS. Security operations can now proactively detect attacks against the BIOS using the CrowdStrike console, with insights from Secureworks.

If there is a security concern, IT departments can use Workspace ONE to push over-the-air (OTA) updates to secure vulnerable devices, or bring out-of-compliance devices back into compliance.

Dell Unified Workspace Offers Predictive + Proactive Support Capabilities

Dell Unified Workspace offers predictive and proactive support capabilities that becomes more insightful, actionable and personalised over time as more data is gathered.

According to Dell, Dell ProSupport Plus with SupportAssist has helped customers reduce time to resolve a failed hard disk drive up to 10X faster.

Dell Unified Workspace Availability

Dell Provisioning for VMware Workspace ONE, ProDeploy Client Suite, ProSupport Suite for PCs, and the Dell SafeBIOS downloadable verification utility are currently available.
The verification utility integration with VMware Workspace ONE, Secureworks and CrowdStrike will be available in Q2 CY19.
Dell SafeGuard and Response is generally available.

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