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As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain.

Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage.

“We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives.”

The UK Cyber Security Center said they have noticed an increase in phishing attempts around this event.

Microsoft said 8.5 million devices running its Windows operating system were affected by the faulty cybersecurity update Friday that led to worldwide disruptions. That’s less than 1% of all Windows-based machines, Microsoft cybersecurity executive David Weston said in a blog post on Saturday.

He also said such a significant disturbance is rare but “demonstrates the interconnected nature of our broad ecosystem.”

What’s happening with air travel?

With their tightly timed, interwoven schedules and complex technology systems, many big airlines struggle to stay on time when everything goes well. It perhaps was not surprising that the industry was among the hardest hit by the outage, with crews and planes caught out of position.

By mid-afternoon Saturday on the U.S. East Coast, airlines around the world had canceled more than 2,000 flights, according to tracking service FlightAware. That was down from 5,100-plus cancellations on Friday.

About 1,600 of Saturday’s canceled flights occurred in the United States, where carriers scrambled to get planes and crews back into position after massive disruptions the day before. According to travel data provider Cirium, U.S. carriers canceled about 3.5% of their scheduled flights for Saturday. Only Australia was hit harder.

Canceled flights were running at about 1% in the United Kingdom, France and Brazil and about 2% in Canada, Italy and India among major air-travel markets.

Robert Mann, a former airline executive and now a consultant in the New York area, said it was unclear exactly why U.S. airlines were suffering disproportionate cancellations, but possible causes include a greater degree of outsourcing of technology and more exposure to Microsoft operating systems that received the faulty upgrade from CrowdStrike.Story Continues

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• ‘The S&P 500 is incredibly dangerous’: Why Warren Buffett’s favorite valuation indicator is flashing a warning for stockshttps://s.yimg.com/rx/ev/builds/1.6.43/pframe.htmlMatthew FoxSat, Jul 20, 2024, 4:31 PM EDT3 min read21Warren BuffettREUTERS/Rick Wilking
  • The Buffett Indicator is indicating US stocks might be overvalued.
  • The indicator was coined by Warren Buffett and measures the total US market cap to GDP.
  • “If the ratio approaches 200% — as it did in 1999 and a part of 2000 — you are playing with fire,” Buffett said in a 2001 Fortune article.
  Warren Buffett’s favorite stock market valuation indicator just hit a record high, signaling that stocks might be highly overvalued.https://fdcacb2eecae70596e6b29696071288f.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.htmlThe Buffett Indicator, which measures the total market cap of US stocks relative to US GDP, hit an all-time peak of 200% on Monday, surpassing the record high of 197% reached in November 2021.In other words, the US stock market’s total market cap of about $55 trillion, as measured by the Wilshire 5000 index, is about double the size of annualized US GDP, which is at about $27 trillion.The stock market experienced a painful year-long bear market shortly after the Buffett Indicator peaked in November 2021.In a 2001 Fortune article, Buffett called the indicator “probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment.”When the indicator reached an “unprecedented level” during the 2000 dot-com bubble of about 190%, “that should have been a very strong warning signal,” Buffett said in the article.”For me, the message of that chart is this: If the percentage relationship falls to the 70% to 80% area, buying stocks is likely to work very well for you. If the ratio approaches 200% — as it did in 1999 and a part of 2000 — you are playing with fire,” Buffett said.Fast forward to 2024, and it appears investors are playing with fire.In a note on Thursday, B. Riley strategist Paul Dietrich pointed to the unprecedented reading in the Buffett Indicator as a reason why investors should be cautious on stocks.In a conversation with Business Insider this week, fund manager Chris Bloomstran of Semper Augustus said that while the Buffett Indicator is somewhat of a flawed tool, it is worth paying attention to as an investor.”I think there is utility to it, and that it’s most likely a mean reverting series, and there is validity to that,” Bloomstran said.However, investors need to apply an “upward trend channel” to the indicator to account for the changes in today’s economy compared to the economy in previous eras.The US economy is structurally different now than even a few decades ago, with materially higher corporate profit margins, more asset-light businesses via the technology sector, a more globalized economy, and significantly different levels of interest rates and inflation.