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The Chinese Communist Party is looking to take advantage of global internet outages to promote China’s cyber offerings and warn that a reliance on Western technology will bring future digital pandemics.
Outages beginning last week caused by a faulty software update from the U.S.-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike have not led to disruptions in China to the same extent as in Western nations, according to reports. The outage hit 8.5 million devices in the U.S. and abroad using Microsoft’s Windows, according to CrowdStrike.
As IT professionals work to recover around the world, state-affiliated media in China have adopted public health terminology to trumpet the strength of China’s defenses, using language harkening back to the debates over the COVID-19 outbreak that spread from China to the world.
“China’s relative immunity to the global outage reflects the country’s cybersecurity prevention capability amid a complex external environment,” the state-linked Global Times news website said Sunday.
The official Xinhua news agency cited an expert on Sunday claiming “more ‘digital pandemics’ like this are expected to emerge.”
China’s systems are less reliant on CrowdStrike’s software and Chinese cybersecurity companies are also taking the opportunity to take a shot at their American competition.
Chinese cyber firm QAX observed disruptions at only tens of thousands of machines, largely in local offices of foreign enterprises and joint ventures, according to the South China Morning Post.
QAX and the Beijing-based 360 Security Technology are among the Chinese firms touting the security of their own products in contrast to CrowdStrike in the days since the outage rippled across the world, according to the Post.
CrowdStrike released a fix to the problem and said on its website on Monday that it is in the process of “operationalizing” a new technique to accelerate the repair work.
“Customers are encouraged to follow the Tech Alerts for latest updates as they happen and they will be notified when action is needed,” CrowdStrike said in an updated statement on Monday.
Analysts warn that the outage has created a new opportunity for cybercriminals and state-sponsored hackers to learn more about avenues for digital disruption in major U.S. systems. CrowdStrike said Saturday that it observed cyberattackers distributing malware disguised as a fix for the outage that was likely aimed at the U.S. company’s Latin American customers.
Sen. Eric Schmitt wrote to the Department of Defense on Friday requesting information about whether the Pentagon was affected by the flawed software update.
The Missouri Republican’s office said the senator is requesting a briefing with the department’s chief information officer, as Mr. Schmitt believes the outage is a warning signal about America’s vulnerability to hostile forces abroad, particularly China.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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