Many computer systems throughout the world were taken offline at 2:00 AM this morning. While Middletown’s computers and servers were unaffected, many of our partners and peers (including the entire State of Connecticut) were affected and are either fully offline or partially unavailable.
What Happened: Crowdstrike, a widely adopted modern antivirus system, pushed out an automatic update to every customer at 2:00 AM. The update broke any Windows machine running Crowdstrike – including computers that run government agencies, airlines, and banks. This is not a cyberattack.
What’s Happening Now? Crowdstrike has distributed information to their customers how to fix the issue. However, the fix requires manual intervention on every single computer affected. There is no automated process.
Is Middletown Affected? We do not use Crowdstrike, but many of our partners do.
Please Be Aware – Cyberattackers have already taken advantage of the chaos. Federal and state public safety agencies have reported a massive increase in phishing attacks. Please be extremely cautious about unusual emails.