Crowdstrike apologizes for crashing global air travel with $10 Uber Eats gift card
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that caused computers across the globe to crash last week, apologized to its partners by offering them $10 Uber Eats gift cards.
In an email shared to X by a recepient, CrowdStrike sends its "heartfelt thanks and apologies for the inconvenience" after a corrupted update it issued on July 19 led millions of Windows machines to become inaccessible.
"lol Crowdstrike crashed millions of computers with a glitch and then sent an apology to partners in the form of a $10 Uber Eats gift card," says one user who obtained the email.
The email contains a QR code allowing partners to redeem the gift card for their "next cup of coffee or late night snack..."
"To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!" the email reads.
On Friday, CrowdStrike issued an update to its customers that use the Windows operating system that caused what's known as the blue-screen-of-death (BSOD). In total, more than 8.5 million computers became unusable at businesses such as banks, airports, and hospitals.
The gesture in response is being met with mockery given the severity of the outrage, which caused, among other things, tens of thousands of airline passengers to be stranded all over the world.
To make matters worse, numerous reports indicate that some of the gift cards aren't even redeemable. As noted by TechCrunch, many are being met with error messages. Some are being told their gift card "has been canceled by the issuing party and is no longer valid."
Chris Tappin, a digital forensics expert based in Australia, is one such partner of CrowdStrike to report the issue.
"Latest CrowdStrike betrayal just dropped: The Uber Eats voucher in the email to partners stating 'your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us' fails with 'We're sorry, this voucher has been cancelled by the issuing party and is no longer valid' (at least in Aus)," he says.
So far, CrowdStrike has not issued a statement on the gift card issue.
And while the gift card is going to firms that pay for CrowdStrike, the people impacted by flight cancellations and work stoppages aren't getting any kind of reimbursement.
CrowdStrike Founder and CEO George Kurtz issued an apology last week as the company worked to fix the issue.
"I want to sincerely apologize directly to all of you for the outage," Kurtz wrote. "All of CrowdStrike understands the gravity and impact of the situation. We quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, allowing us to focus diligently on restoring customer systems as our highest priority."
Ultimately, the gift card fiasco may have made things worse for the company as CrowdStrike is already struggling to rebuild its reputation.
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