//The Wire//1300Z July 19, 2024//

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//BLUF: MAJOR CROWDSTRIKE CYBER ISSUE STRIKES ALMOST ALL MICROSOFT WINDOWS ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS GLOBALLY. HOUTHI DRONE STRIKES TEL AVIV.//

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-International Events-

Middle East: Last night a Houthi drone successfully struck Tel Aviv. One long-range drone successfully evaded all Israeli and American defenses in the region to strike Tel Aviv for the first time. PM Netanyahu has reportedly canceled (or more likely delayed) his upcoming trip to the United States as a result of this incident.

-HomeFront-

USA: This morning, almost all Windows Enterprise-based networks were brought down via an inadvertent software update from CrowdStrike. The CrowdStrike CEO has stated that this incident was not a cyberattack. The impacts of this incident have been widespread. Many airlines have grounded flights. Banks are reporting issues, many businesses can’t process payments, 911 call centers have been reported to be down, media organizations, radio stations, medical facilities, telecoms networks have all reported being affected by the outage in some way. No timeline for recovery has been provided yet, as engineers are still working on solutions.

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Analyst Comments: The drone attack in Tel Aviv, while significant in its own right, could also have had more wide-ranging effects. The drone impacted what appeared to be a random target just a few hundred meters from the U.S. Consulate in Tel Aviv. While it’s likely that the guidance systems onboard Houthi munitions are not precise enough to impact on a point target from thousands of miles away and therefore was probably not deliberately targeting the United States, the potential for more direct (but somewhat accidental) U.S. involvement in this conflict remains.

Regarding today’s massive IT outage, this incident is looking to be one of the largest IT disasters in history. As such, this is another reminder of how a company most people have never heard of can push a random update in the middle of the night, and crash most IT systems around the world.

Analyst: S2A1

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