Crowdstrike: A great example of how being a lying, warmonger can pay off big

Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 03/08/2023 - 1:02am

Perhaps you noticed this funny/clever Super Bowl commercial. Crowdstrike is full of smart, savvy people.

Which is why Crowdstrike stocks went ballistic the other day.

The global cybersecurity company’s shares were up 6% after its fourth-quarter earnings and revenue beat Wall Street’s estimates. CrowdStrike posted adjusted per-share earnings of 47 cents, exceeding analysts’ estimates of 43 cents, according to Refinitiv. The company’s revenue also topped expectations, coming in at $637 million compared to the $625 million anticipated by analysts. CrowdStrike also offered strong earnings and revenue guidance for the current quarter and full year.

So great news all around. Crowdstrike is "printing money" for wealthy investors, right?
Actually Crowdstrike has never posted a profit.

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Maybe you remember this headline.

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The Democratic National Committee famously "rebuffed" a request from the FBI to examine its email server after it was allegedly hacked by Russia during the 2016 election.
You probably remember that, but you've probably forgotten this.

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TYT can report that at the same time CrowdStrike was working on behalf of the DNC, the company was also under contract with the FBI for unspecified technical services. According to a US federal government spending database, CrowdStrike’s “period of performance” on behalf of the FBI was between July 2015 and July 2016. CrowdStrike’s findings regarding the DNC server breach — which continue to this day to be cited as authoritative by everyone from former FBI Director James Comey, to NBC anchor Megyn Kelly — were issued in June 2016, when the contract was still active.

OK. Nothing suspicious here. Just a harmless coincidence. NOT!
Do private companies normally withhold access from the FBI to a crime scene, when that company already contracts with the FBI?
What would be their motivation?

Ignoring that for a moment, look at how competent Crowdstrike is since the DNC hack.

The National Republican Congressional Committee was hacked during the 2018 election after hiring CrowdStrike, the cyber-firm that the Democratic National Committee employed that allowed DNC emails to be stolen even after the 2016 hack was detected.

The emails of four top NRCC officials were stolen in a major hack that was detected in April — eight months ago, Politico reported Tuesday.

So in the past four years Crowdstrike:

a) detected the DNC server hack, but failed to stop it
b) falsely accused the Russians of hacking Ukrainian artillery
c) failed to prevent the NRCC from being hacked, eventhough that was why they were hired
d) got hacked by what CrowdStrike says were Russian hackers, but shifted blame to Microsoft for the hack

In other words, Crowdstrike is really bad at their job.
In addition to being really bad at business.

So what does a cybersecurity company that is hemorrhaging money and can't protect it's clients do?
It does an IPO.

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It just goes to show that "getting it right" is not the same thing as "doing a good job."
If you tell the right people what they want to hear, the money will take care of itself.
And that is the one thing that Crowdstrike excels in - telling lying governments the lies that they want to hear.
When you master that skill the world is your oyster.

CrowdStrike and CISA have announced a new partnership that will see the cybersecurity company provide endpoint security for the government organization -- and others -- while also "operationalizing" the Executive Order endpoint detection and response (EDR) initiative.

CrowdStrike was chosen as one of the platforms to support the initiative at multiple federal agencies and will use its CrowdStrike Falcon platform to "secure critical endpoints and workloads for CISA and multiple other major civilian agencies."

CISA = Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency.
Put another way: Because of Crowdstrike's almost uninterrupted record of failurene in cyberdefense, but always knowing the "politically correct" foreigner to blame, has allowed Crowdstrike to win the IT contract with one of the most important and security sensitive groups in North America.
Who thinks that this will end well?

Remember Crowdstrike, the security company that examined there DNC email server and then told the FBI who hacked it? Funny thing about that.

In lieu of substantive evidence provided to the public that the alleged hacks which led to Wikileaks releases of DNC and Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta’s emails were orchestrated by the Russian Government, CrowdStrike’s bias has been cited as undependable in its own assessment, in addition to its skeptical methods and conclusions. The firm’s CTO and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank with openly anti-Russian sentiments that is funded by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who also happened to donate at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.
In 2013, the Atlantic Council awarded Hillary Clinton it’s Distinguished International Leadership Award.

A Ukrainian oligarch who was a big donor to the Clinton campaign.
What a coincidence!
Not only that, Crowdstrike falsely accused Russia of hacking Ukrainian artillery.

Tags: 
Crowdstrike
russiagate
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Comments

Submitted by humphrey on Wed, 03/08/2023 - 1:20am

I guess if you have the right connections anything is possible.

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Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Wed, 03/08/2023 - 2:33am
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What makes that a good commercial has nothing to do with the quality of the company.

It's good because of the quality of the people who made the commercial.
Actors.
Set designers.
A director.
Sooo much crew.

These people wanted nothing more than to be artists, and making commercials was probably not their first choice - certainly not what inspired them to choose such a multifariously risky way of life. They probably had nothing to do with CrowdStrike, and likely had no defense in the way of education/temperament/spare time/special resources against believing the lies it peddled anyway (look what Stephen Colbert's become, FCS: The very guy he used to make fun of! And come to think of it, THEY'RE a leading reason why!).

Talk about "cucks"; their charm comes in part from an inner authenticity that their clients certainly do not have. They are (let's coin a ridiculous term, why not?) 'soul-launderers'...and they don't even know it, and what are they even supposed to be able to do about it?

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Submitted by Snode on Wed, 03/08/2023 - 7:40am

that capitalism at it's finest was to sell a cup if piss, call it medicine and charge a fortune for it. Guess we're there. The thing he left off was forcing the little people to take the blame and assume the cost of cleaning up the mess.

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Submitted by usefewersyllables on Wed, 03/08/2023 - 10:22am
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as the Krupp family for the 21st century: happily selling weapons to both sides in the current cyber-conflict.

Crowdstrike is just another bunch of folks attempting to profit by exploiting the fact that Microsoft's products have been designed from the outset to be hackable. The fact that they are incompetent at it simply comes with the territory: if one were to actually *fix* the root problem of intrinsically-hackable product, nobody would make any money on selling upgrades and fixes for it any more... Just another Wall Street Ponzi scheme.

Now that we've been forced to adopt the MBA's wet dream- the SaaS business model (Software as a Service), where software is leased instead of purchased, and produces an infinite stream of revenue in perpetuity, there's less reason than ever to actually fix it. We will just continue to vomit money-offerings up to the Microsoft gods in the hopes that the rain won't come, or whatever.

Not a fan. I'm typing this on a Linux box for which I have the source code, and I avoid using Microsoft product as much as is humanly possible. Sometimes I can't, because I want to stay employed. But when I retire, I think I'll downgrade to pre-Solaris SunOS 4.2 on an old Sparcstation 5, run Netscape, and dodder off into the sunset with my fellow Luddites...

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Wed, 03/08/2023 - 3:39pm
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@usefewersyllables

Ubuntu 22.04.02 LTS
Dell XPS 8940

pretty cheap as things go

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by Linda Wood on Wed, 03/08/2023 - 11:56am

testified under oath to the House Intelligence Committee that there was no hack.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_...!

... Asked for the date when alleged Russian hackers stole data from the DNC server, Henry testified that CrowdStrike did not in fact know if such a theft occurred at all: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated [moved electronically] from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated," Henry said.

Henry reiterated his claim on multiple occasions: 

• "There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left."

• "There’s not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."

• "There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network. … We didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made."

• "Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but we believe it left, based on what we saw."

• Asked directly if he could "unequivocally say" whether "it was or was not exfiltrated out of DNC," Henry told the committee: "I can't say based on that." 

Rep. Adam Schiff: Democrat held up interview transcripts, but finally relented after acting intel director Richard Grenell suggested he would release them himself.

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