Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity company CrowdStrike YOLOed a software update to millions of Windows machines. Or as they put it:
On July 19, 2024 at 04:09 UTC, as part of ongoing operations, CrowdStrike released a sensor configuration update to Windows systems.
That sensor configuration update caused the largest IT outage in history.
The following estimates are calculated using data from the NVD Dashboard. At the time of this reports generation, NVD's 2024 daily average for analyzing new CVEs is 30.27. There is a current backlog of 16777 CVEs awaiting analysis. With an average influx of 111.07 new CVEs per day, a daily average of 217.93 analyses is required to clear this backlog and process new CVEs. Currently, NVD is falling short of this goal by 187.66 CVEs a day. Given this data, if the current daily rate of CVE analysis persists, the projected number of CVEs awaiting analysis by the end of 2024 will be 29462.6.
Ransomware actors have had a rough start this year, as stats from cybersecurity firm Coveware show that the trend of victims declining to pay the cybercriminals continues and has now reached a new record low of 28%.
As we move further into 2024, we must be cautious (maybe even fearful!) of ransomware cases increasing even more than in previous years. Though governments around the world are taking more interest in the worldwide threat, we can see from the increase of cases that our actions have not been enough to thwart the ransomware threat. As new groups continue to form, former groups continue to evolve into new brands, and the big players continue to ramp up their efforts, we must remain vigilant and focus on our preparation and early detection capabilities.
