Chinese cybersecurity companies are taking advantage of the massive Microsoft Windows outage that upended businesses and grounded flights around the world on Thursday and Friday by promoting their own software, as Beijing pushes to cut the country’s reliance on foreign suppliers.
Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused the outage, one of the largest in history, by pushing a bad software update that crashed the Windows operating system. It affected airports, banks, and hospitals, among many other businesses.
360 Security Technology, China’s largest cybersecurity firm, took the opportunity to promote its products, which it claimed were “more reliable, stable, comprehensive and intelligent”.
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“When selecting endpoint security software, it is important to fully evaluate its defence capabilities to avoid potential security risks and ensure that business continuity and data security are not threatened,” it said in a social media post on Friday.
Visitors tour the Chinese internet security firm Qihoo 360 booth at the World 5G Convention in Beijing on November 21, 2019. Photo: Xinhua alt=Visitors tour the Chinese internet security firm Qihoo 360 booth at the World 5G Convention in Beijing on November 21, 2019. Photo: Xinhua>
QAX, another well-known firm in the sector, wrote in a blog post on Friday that “software vendors involved in system stability need to have stricter quality control of their software”.
Tencent Holdings, which operates the Tencent PC Manager platform, said on Friday that it received reports from some users who experienced the Windows error screen, known as the blue screen of death. It referred users to CrowdStrike’s official workaround steps to resolve the problem.
The incident adds to Beijing’s list of reasons for seeking to move away from foreign technology as it pursues technological self-reliance in the face of mounting export restrictions and sanctions from Washington. Key infrastructure was largely unaffected in China, where only foreign businesses and luxury hotels were hit.
While Microsoft said on Friday that its systems had been restored, many businesses continued to deal with the fallout.
The Hong Kong International Airport, whose passenger check-in system collapsed, issued a notice on Saturday saying operations had returned to normal.
China’s cybersecurity market is dominated by local players. Beijing has long been phasing out software from companies like Russia’s Kaspersky Lab and US-based Symantec. CrowdStrike does not sell products and services in China, according to its website.
CrowdStrike shares fell 11.1 per cent to US$304.96 on the Nasdaq on Friday, while Microsoft edged down 0.74 per cent. Competitors SentinelOne and Palo Alto Networks gained 7.85 per cent and 2.16 per cent, respectively.
While China has pursued technological self-reliance to varying degrees for decades, the government’s mistrust of foreign commercial software deepened after the 2013 leaks from US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden revealed methods that the National Security Agency used to access information from some of the world’s biggest tech companies.
The government made a concerted push to completely switch to domestic security software a decade ago, according to a 2014 report by state-owned China News Service.
All the departments of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology have installed 360 software, the report said, and state-owned enterprises would follow by also installing domestic alternatives.
CrowdStrike has made monitoring for Chinese cyberattacks an important part of its business, as Western countries have warned of an increasing number of attacks coming from China-linked actors.
In 2015, the company reported seven Chinese cyberattacks against US technology and pharmaceutical companies. China’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at the time that “the Chinese government would not in any way participate, encourage or support enterprises in engaging in the theft of trade secrets”.
In its latest annual report, CrowdStrike said that “China-nexus adversaries increasingly targeted third-party relationships” in 2023.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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