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CrowdStrike

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This article is about the security company. For the global outage, see 2024 CrowdStrike incident.

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.
Company typePublic
IndustryInformation security
Founded2011; 13 years ago (2011)
Founders
Headquarters
Austin, Texas
,
United States
Key people
George Kurtz (CEO)
RevenueIncrease US$3.06 billion (FY24)
Negative increase US$−2 million (FY24)
Increase US$89.3 million (FY24)
Total assetsIncrease US$6.65 billion (FY24)
Total equityIncrease US$2.30 billion (FY24)
Number of employees
7,925 (FY24)
Websitecrowdstrike.com
Footnotes / references
Financials as of fiscal year ended January 31, 2024.
References:[1]

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas. It provides cloud workload protection and endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.[2][3]

The company has been involved in investigations of several high-profile cyberattacks, including the 2014 Sony Pictures hack, the 2015–16 cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and the 2016 email leak involving the DNC.[4][5] In July 2024, a faulty update to its security software caused global computer outages that disrupted air travel, banking, broadcasting, and other services.[6][7][8]

History

Founding: 2011–2019

CrowdStrike was co-founded in 2011 by George Kurtz (CEO), Dmitri Alperovitch (former CTO), and Gregg Marston (CFO, retired).[9][10][11][12] The following year, they hired Shawn Henry, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official, to lead the subsidiary CrowdStrike Services, Inc., which offered security and response services.[13][14] The company launched its first product in June 2013: CrowdStrike Falcon, which provided endpoint protection, threat intelligence and attribution.[15][16]

In May 2014, CrowdStrike's reports helped the United States Department of Justice to charge five Chinese military hackers with economic cyber espionage against U.S. corporations.[17] CrowdStrike also uncovered the activities of Energetic Bear, a group connected to Russia's Federal Security Service that conducted intelligence operations against global targets, primarily in the energy sector.[18]

After the Sony Pictures hack, CrowdStrike uncovered evidence implicating the government of North Korea and demonstrated how the attack was carried out.[19] In 2014, CrowdStrike helped identify members of Putter Panda, the state-sponsored Chinese group of hackers also known as PLA Unit 61486.[20][21]

In May 2015, the company released information about VENOM, a critical flaw in an open-source hypervisor called Quick Emulator (QEMU) that allowed attackers to access sensitive personal information.[22][23] In October 2015, CrowdStrike announced that it had identified Chinese hackers attacking technology and pharmaceutical companies around the time that U.S. President Barack Obama and China's leader Xi Jinping publicly agreed not to conduct economic espionage against each other. The alleged hacking would have been in violation of that agreement.[24]

In July 2015, Google invested in the company's Series C funding round, which was followed by Series D and Series E, raising a total of $480 million as of May 2019.[25][26][27]

In 2017, the company reached a valuation of more than $1 billion with an estimated annual revenue of $100 million.[28] In June 2018, the company said it was valued at more than $3 billion.[26] Investors include Telstra, March Capital Partners, Rackspace, Accel Partners and Warburg Pincus.[29][30]

In June 2019, the company made an initial public offering on the Nasdaq.[31][32]

Acquisitions: 2020–2024

In September 2020, CrowdStrike acquired zero trust and conditional access technology provider Preempt Security for $96 million.[33] In February 2021, the company acquired Danish log management platform Humio for $400 million with plans to integrate Humio's log aggregation into CrowdStrike's XDR offering.[34] Later that November, CrowdStrike acquired SecureCircle, a SaaS-based cybersecurity service that extends zero trust endpoint security to include data.[35] In December 2021, the company moved its headquarters location from Sunnyvale, California, to Austin, Texas.[36] In 2023, CrowdStrike introduced CrowdStream service in collaboration with Cribl.io.[37] CrowdStrike has also focused on working with the U.S. government and selling its services to government agencies.[38] CrowdStrike joined the S&P 500 index in June 2024.[39] In 2023, CrowdStrike acquired Israeli cybersecurity startup Bionic.ai.[40] In 2024, CrowdStrike acquired Israeli startup Flow Security.[41]

2024 incident

Main article: 2024 CrowdStrike incident

On July 19, 2024, CrowdStrike released a software update to the vulnerability scanner Falcon Sensor. Flaws in the update caused blue screens of death on Microsoft Windows machines, disrupting millions of Windows computers worldwide.[42][43] Affected machines were forced into a bootloop, making them unusable. The downtime caused a widespread global impact, grounding commercial airline flights, temporarily taking Sky News and other broadcasters offline, and disrupting banking and healthcare services as well as 911 emergency call centers.[44][45] By the end of the day, CrowdStrike's share price had dropped $38.09, or 11.10%, to $304.96.[46]

Russian hacking investigations

CrowdStrike helped investigate the Democratic National Committee cyberattacks and a connection to Russian intelligence services. On March 20, 2017, James Comey testified before congress stating, "CrowdStrike, Mandiant, and ThreatConnect review[ed] the evidence of the hack and conclude[d] with high certainty that it was the work of APT 28 and APT 29 who are known to be Russian intelligence services."[47] Comey previously testified in January 2017 that a request for FBI forensics investigators to access the DNC servers was denied, saying "Ultimately what was agreed to is the private company [CrowdStrike] would share with us what they saw."[48]

In December 2016, CrowdStrike released a report stating that Russian government-affiliated group Fancy Bear had hacked a Ukrainian artillery app.[49] They concluded that Russia had used the hack to cause large losses to Ukrainian artillery units. The app (called ArtOS) is installed on tablet PCs and used for fire-control.[50] CrowdStrike also found a hacked variation of POPR-D30 being distributed on Ukrainian military forums that utilized an X-Agent implant.[51]

The International Institute for Strategic Studies rejected CrowdStrike's assessment that claimed hacking caused losses to Ukrainian artillery units, saying that their data on Ukrainian D30 howitzer losses was misused in CrowdStrike's report. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense also rejected the CrowdStrike report, stating that actual artillery losses were much smaller than what was reported by CrowdStrike and were not associated with Russian hacking.[52] Prior to this, CrowdStrike had published a report claiming that malware used in Ukraine and against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) appeared to be unique and identical, further evidence for a Russian origin of the DNC attack.[53]

Cybersecurity firm SecureWorks discovered a list of email addresses targeted by Fancy Bear in phishing attacks. The list included the email address of Yaroslav Sherstyuk, the developer of ArtOS.[54] Additional Associated Press research supports CrowdStrike's conclusions about Fancy Bear.[55] Radio Free Europe notes that the AP report "lends some credence to the original CrowdStrike report, showing that the app had, in fact, been targeted."[56]

In the Trump–Ukraine scandal, Donald Trump, then the president of the United States, held a July 25, 2019, phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, in which Trump asked Zelensky to look into a conspiracy theory that was being promoted on far-right websites such as Breitbart News and Russian state media outlets such as Russia Today and Sputnik.[57] The theory held that namely, that the Ukrainian government used CrowdStrike to hack into the Democratic National Committee's servers in 2016 and frame Russia for the crime to undermine Trump in the 2016 presidential election.[58][59] The conspiracy theory has been repeatedly debunked.[60][61][62]

See also

References

  1. ^ "US SEC: Form 10-K Crowdstrike Holdings, Inc". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 7 March 2024.
  2. ^ Duggan, Wayne (17 March 2021). "Why CrowdStrike Is A Top Growth Stock Pick". Benzinga. Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
  3. ^ "CrowdStrike's security software targets bad guys, not their malware". TechRepublic. 9 October 2015. Archived from the original on 2 June 2016. Retrieved 10 June 2016.
  4. ^ "CrowdStrike demonstrates how attackers wiped the data from the machines at Sony". International Data Group. 2015. Archived from the original on 20 August 2016. Retrieved 9 June 2016.
  5. ^ Hamburger, Tom; Nakashima, Ellen (24 July 2016). "Clinton campaign – and some cyber experts – say Russia is behind email release". The Washington Post.
  6. ^ Banfield-Nwachi, Mabel (19 July 2024). "Windows global IT outage: what we know so far". The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
  7. ^ Plummer, Robert (19 July 2024). "Crowdstrike and Microsoft: What we know about global IT outage". BBC News. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
  8. ^ Godfrey, Paul; Druker, Simon; Wynder, Ehren (19 July 2024). "911 call centers back online after IT outage causes global chaos". United Press International. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
  9. ^ "In conversation with George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike". Fortune. Archived from the original on 1 July 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  10. ^ "Bloomberg – Dmitri Alperovitch". www.bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on 14 July 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
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  12. ^ Albert-Deitch, Cameron (15 May 2019). "CrowdStrike, the $3.4 Billion Startup That Fought Russian Spies in 2016, Just Filed for an IPO". Inc.com. Archived from the original on 3 June 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  13. ^ Ragan, Steve (23 April 2012). "Former FBI Exec to Head CrowdStrike Services". SecurityWeek. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  14. ^ Messmer, Ellen (18 April 2012). "Top FBI cyber cop joins startup CrowdStrike to fight enterprise intrusions". Network World. Archived from the original on 8 March 2024. Retrieved 10 June 2016.
  15. ^ Messmer, Ellen (18 June 2013). "Start-up tackles advanced persistent threats on Microsoft, Apple computers". Network World. Archived from the original on 17 May 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  16. ^ "U.S. firm CrowdStrike claims success in deterring Chinese hackers". Reuters. 13 April 2015. Archived from the original on 12 November 2017. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
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  24. ^ Yadron, Danny (19 October 2015). "Report Warns of Chinese Hacking". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 17 May 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
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  26. ^ a b "Cybersecurity startup CrowdStrike raises $200 million at $3 billion valuation". VentureBeat. 19 June 2018. Archived from the original on 3 June 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
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  34. ^ Cimpanu, Catalin (18 February 2021). "CrowdStrike acquires Humio for $400 million". ZDNet. Retrieved 10 July 2024.
  35. ^ Novinson, Michael (1 November 2021). "CrowdStrike To Buy Data Protection Startup SecureCircle". CRN. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
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  43. ^ Sharwood, Simon. "CrowdStrike code update bricking Windows machines around the world". The Register. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
  44. ^ Godfrey, Paul; Druker, Simon; Wynder, Ehren (19 July 2024). "911 call centers back online after IT outage causes global chaos". United Press International. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
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  51. ^ Boldi (3 January 2017). "Technical details on the Fancy Bear Android malware (poprd30.apk)". Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security, Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Archived from the original on 9 February 2018. Retrieved 8 February 2018.
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  57. ^ Broderick, Ryan (26 September 2019). "Here's How Donald Trump Ended Up Referencing A Russian-Promoted 4chan Conspiracy Theory In His Call To The Ukrainian President". Buzzfeed News. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
  58. ^ Sullivan, Eileen (25 September 2019). "How CrowdStrike Became Part of Trump's Ukraine Call". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
  59. ^ Marks, Joseph (26 September 2019). "The Cybersecurity 202: Trump's CrowdStrike conspiracy theory shows he still doubts Russian election interference". The Washington Post. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
  60. ^ Bajak, Frank (13 November 2019). "Debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory is knocked down – again". Associated Press News. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
  61. ^ Cillizza, Chris (30 September 2019). "Don't miss the totally debunked conspiracy theory Donald Trump pushed in the Ukraine call". CNN. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
  62. ^ Collins, Ben (3 October 2019). "Trump seized on a conspiracy theory called the 'insurance policy.' Now, it's at the center of an impeachment investigation". NBC News. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
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