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CrowdStrike

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CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.
Company typePublic
IndustryInformation security
Founded2011; 13 years ago (2011)
Founders
HeadquartersAustin, Texas, U.S.
Key people
George Kurtz (CEO)
Products
RevenueIncrease US$3.06 billion (2024)
Negative increase US$−2 million (2024)
Negative increase US$−89 million (2024)
Total assetsIncrease US$6.65 billion (2024)
Total equityIncrease US$2.30 billion (2024)
Number of employees
8,429 (April 30, 2024)
Websitecrowdstrike.com
Footnotes / references
Financials as of January 31, 2024.[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 cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and the 2016 email leak involving the DNC.[4][5]

History

Founding: 2011–2019

CrowdStrike was co-founded by George Kurtz (CEO), Dmitri Alperovitch (former CTO), and Gregg Marston (CFO, retired) in 2011.[6][7][8][9] In 2012, Shawn Henry, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official, was hired to lead the subsidiary CrowdStrike Services, Inc., which focused on proactive and incident response services.[10][11] In June 2013, the company launched its first product, CrowdStrike Falcon, which provided endpoint protection, threat intelligence and attribution.[12][13]

In May 2014, CrowdStrike's reports assisted the United States Department of Justice in charging five Chinese military hackers for economic cyber espionage against United States corporations.[14] CrowdStrike also uncovered the activities of Energetic Bear, a group connected to the Russian Federation that conducted intelligence operations against global targets, primarily in the energy sector.[15]

After the Sony Pictures hack, CrowdStrike uncovered evidence implicating the government of North Korea and demonstrated how the attack was carried out.[16] In 2014, CrowdStrike played a role in identifying members of Putter Panda, the state-sponsored Chinese group of hackers also known as PLA Unit 61486.[17][18]

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.[19][20] In October 2015, CrowdStrike announced that it had identified Chinese hackers attacking technology and pharmaceutical companies around the time that US President Barack Obama and China's Paramount leader Xi Jinping publicly agreed not to conduct economic espionage against each other. The alleged hacking would have been in violation of that agreement.[21]

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.[22][23][24]

In 2017, the company reached a valuation of more than $1 billion with an estimated annual revenue of $100 million.[25] In June 2018, the company said it was valued at more than $3 billion.[23] Investors include Telstra, March Capital Partners, Rackspace, Accel Partners and Warburg Pincus.[26][27]

In June 2019, the company made an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq.[28][29]

Acquisitions: 2020–2024

In September 2020, CrowdStrike acquired zero trust and conditional access technology provider Preempt Security for $96 million.[30] 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.[31] Later that November, CrowdStrike acquired SecureCircle, a SaaS-based cybersecurity service that extends zero trust endpoint security to include data.[32] In December 2021, the company moved its headquarters location from Sunnyvale, California, to Austin, Texas.[33] In 2023, CrowdStrike introduced CrowdStream service in collaboration with Cribl.io.[34] CrowdStrike joined the S&P 500 index in June 2024.[35]

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."[36]

In December 2016, CrowdStrike released a report stating that Russian government-affiliated group Fancy Bear had hacked a Ukrainian artillery app.[37] 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.[38] CrowdStrike also found a hacked variation of POPR-D30 being distributed on Ukrainian military forums that utilized an X-Agent implant.[39]

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.[40]

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.[41] Additional Associated Press research supports CrowdStrike's conclusions about Fancy Bear.[42] 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."[43]

In the Trump–Ukraine scandal, a transcript of a conversation between Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, and Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, had Trump asking Zelensky to look into a conspiracy theory appearing on far-right websites such as Breitbart.com and Russian state media outlets such as Russia Today and Sputnik[44] regarding CrowdStrike – namely, that the Ukrainian government used Crowdstrike to hack into the Democratic National Committee's servers in 2016 and framed Russia for the crime in order to undermine Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election.[45][46] The conspiracy theory has been repeatedly debunked.[47][48][49]

2024 Blue Screen of Death

Main article: July 2024 global cyber outages

On July 19, 2024, a CrowdStrike update was suspected to cause the Blue Screen of Death on Microsoft Windows, affecting millions of Windows computers worldwide, including those of essential services like emergency services, hospitals, banks, airlines, trains and others.[50][51][52]

The blue screen of death is reported with a stop code of PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA from the csagent.sys driver.[53]

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. ^ "In conversation with George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike". Fortune. Archived from the original on 1 July 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  7. ^ "Bloomberg - Dmitri Alperovitch". www.bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on 14 July 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  8. ^ "Standing up at the gates of hell: CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz". Fortune. 29 July 2015. Archived from the original on 29 May 2016. Retrieved 10 June 2016.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Ragan, Steve (23 April 2012). "Former FBI Exec to Head CrowdStrike Services". SecurityWeek. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ "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.
  14. ^ Gorman, Devlin Barrett and Siobhan (20 May 2014). "U.S. Charges Five in Chinese Army With Hacking". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  15. ^ "The old foe, new attack and unsolved mystery in the recent U.S. energy sector hacking campaign". CyberScoop. 12 July 2017. Archived from the original on 24 September 2019. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  16. ^ "What's in a typo? More evidence tying North Korea to the Sony hack". PCWorld. Archived from the original on 19 August 2016. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  17. ^ Perlroth, Nicole (9 June 2014). "2nd China Army Unit Implicated in Online Spying". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 12 November 2017. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  18. ^ "Second China unit accued of cyber crime". Financial Times. 10 June 2014. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  19. ^ "'Venom' vulnerability: Serious computer bug shatters cloud security". Fortune. 13 May 2015. Archived from the original on 25 April 2016. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  20. ^ Goodin, Dan (13 May 2015). "Extremely serious virtual machine bug threatens cloud providers everywhere". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 22 June 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  21. ^ 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.
  22. ^ Kuranda, Sarah (17 May 2017). "Crowdstrike Lands $100M Funding Round, Looks To Expand Globally And Invest In Partners". CRN. Archived from the original on 3 June 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  23. ^ 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.
  24. ^ "CrowdStrike may top these 6 biggest-ever U.S. security IPOs next month". www.bizjournals.com. Archived from the original on 28 April 2020. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
  25. ^ Hackett, Robert. (May 17, 2017). "Hack Investigator CrowdStrike Reaches $1 Billion Valuation". Fortune website Archived 29 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 9 June 2017.
  26. ^ "Security Company CrowdStrike Scores $100M Led By Google Capital". TechCrunch. 13 July 2015. Archived from the original on 4 April 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  27. ^ "CrowdStrike raises $100 million for cybersecurity". www.bizjournals.com. Archived from the original on 28 April 2020. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
  28. ^ Murphy, Hannah (12 June 2019). "Cyber security group CrowdStrike's shares jump nearly 90% after IPO". Financial Times.
  29. ^ Feiner, Lauren (12 June 2019). "CrowdStrike pops more than 70% in debut, now worth over $11 billion". CNBC. Archived from the original on 12 June 2019. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
  30. ^ Gagliordi, Natalie. "CrowdStrike to acquire Preempt Security for $96 million". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 26 September 2020. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  31. ^ Cimpanu, Catalin (18 February 2021). "CrowdStrike acquires Humio for $400 million". ZDNet. Retrieved 10 July 2024.
  32. ^ Novinson, Michael (1 November 2021). "CrowdStrike To Buy Data Protection Startup SecureCircle". CRN. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
  33. ^ "CrowdStrike Changes Principal Office to Austin, Texas". CrowdStrike. 28 December 2021. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
  34. ^ Alspach, Kyle. "RSAC 2023 Sees Big Moves From SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, Google Cloud, Accenture | CRN". www.crn.com. Retrieved 29 February 2024.
  35. ^ Carson, Ed (9 June 2024). "CrowdStrike, KKR, GoDaddy To Join S&P 500 In Quarterly Rebalance; Stocks Jump". Investor's Business Daily.
  36. ^ "Full transcript: FBI Director James Comey testifies on Russian interference in 2016 election". Archived from the original on 23 May 2017. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
  37. ^ "Russian hackers linked to DNC attack also targeted Ukrainian military, says report". theverge.com. 23 December 2016. Archived from the original on 17 November 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  38. ^ Noosphere engineering school (31 October 2015). "New brainchild of engineering school was tested by the armed forces". noosphereengineering.com. Archived from the original on 29 December 2017. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
  39. ^ 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.
  40. ^ Kuzmenko, Oleksiy (23 March 2017). "Think Tank: Cyber Firm at Center of Russian Hacking Charges Misread Data". Voice of America. Archived from the original on 20 January 2018. Retrieved 20 December 2017.
  41. ^ Miller, Christopher (2 November 2017). "Fancy Bear Tried To Hack E-Mail Of Ukrainian Making Artillery-Guidance App". RadioFreeEurope. Archived from the original on 6 February 2018. Retrieved 8 February 2018.
  42. ^ Satter, Raphael (2 November 2017). "Russia hackers pursued Putin foes, not just US Democrats". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2 April 2019. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
  43. ^ Miller, Christopher (2 November 2017). "'Fancy Bear' Tried To Hack E-Mail Of Ukrainian Making Artillery-Guidance App". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Archived from the original on 2 April 2019. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
  44. ^ 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.
  45. ^ Sullivan, Eileen (25 September 2019). "How CrowdStrike Became Part of Trump's Ukraine Call". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
  46. ^ 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.
  47. ^ Bajak, Frank (13 November 2019). "Debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory is knocked down - again". Associated Press News. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
  48. ^ 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.
  49. ^ 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.
  50. ^ "Huge Windows Blackout Hits Banks, Airports And More". Forbes. 19 July 2024.
  51. ^ "Latest Crowdstrike Update Causes Blue Screen Of Death On Microsoft Windows, Multiple Users Affected". Times Now. 19 July 2024. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
  52. ^ "Australian cyber outage likely related to issue at Crowdstrike, govt spokesperson". Reuters. 19 July 2024.
  53. ^ "CrowdStrike code update bricking Windows machines around the world". The Register. 19 July 2024. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
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