(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) A major global IT meltdown Friday morning foisted a familiar name back into headlines for those old enough to recall the 2016 Russia collusion hoax and still young enough to recall it.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company employed by the Democratic National Committee to maintain its server security and, later, to conduct an internal audit—the results of which were never publicly revealed—was at the center of a suspicious outage that crippled banks, transportation, infrastructure and other major industries.
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We…
— George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 19, 2024
The company blamed Microsoft, calling the issue “a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”
According to CNBC, other companies relying on CrowdStrike’s cloud-based Falcon antivirus software were facing the “blue screen of death,” which left them unable to reboot, as a result of the issue.
Several major airlines were grounding flights, including those out of Milwaukee, Wisc., where Republicans were attempting to return home after this week’s GOP Convention.
In New York City, pictures showed many of the iconic Times Square electronic billboards had shut down.
Other reports indicated general chaos such as traffic-light outages throughout the country.
The meltdown comes at another particularly critical juncture for the DNC as it appears to be taking desperate and drastic measures following last Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
With Trump’s popularity having hit a crescendo in its aftermath, the Democrats are now desperate to dispatch with President Joe Biden, and rumors abound that he has been given his marching orders to withdraw from the campaign over the weekend—without endorsing his black, female running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris.
For some, who suspect the outcome of the “democratic” primary is already baked into the cake, this series of seemingly organic moves may come as no surprise. Waiting until the late August convention to reveal the actual presidential nominee has been Democrats’ intent all along, perhaps banking on the idea that Trump fatigue will set in, despite the fact that Biden’s presidency has been a de-facto Obama third term.
Nonetheless, the possibility of an open primary presents a potential power vacuum that will send several Democrat hopefuls scrambling for the brass ring—with Hillary Clinton being no exception. And it may, thus, be necessary to tie up a few loose ends to the best of her ability by ensuring there are no lingering traces of the Seth Rich incident, PizzaGate, the Steele Dossier, the Clinton emails or any number of others in CrowdStrike’s system.
Tons of furious tech people looking into Crowdstrike because it just ruined their weekends, realizing they either lied or were paid to attribute the DNC hack to Russia
— Arthur Bloom (@j_arthur_bloom) July 19, 2024
On the other hand, the hack also coincides with the release of Julian Assange, the Wikileaks head who made certain concessions in return for his freedom to delete the existing emails from his public servers—but that’s not to say he doesn’t know how to obtain more.
And with the DNC servers having long been rumored to have made their way to Ukraine, the recent ouster of his inside guy Joe Biden after having recently lost his bid to join NATO and suffered the ultimate affront—being called “President Putin”—may have inspired President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to shore up his collection of kompromat.
The incident and its timing actually call to mind the series of unusual banking blips that preceded the 2008 election, when the financial meltdown (with some help from political neophyte Marc Elias who stole the Minnesota election for Saturday Night Live alum Al Franken) helped to secure a congressional supermajority and offered the justification for what was, at the time, an unprecedented government spending package.
As the attack on Trump last weekend underscored, there are very few coincidences in this time of the political season, and any apparent anomaly such as this with a connection to the DNC is worth taking note of, should its relevance to the bigger picture later become clear.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
