What do you do if you push out a software update that causes a huge chunk of the planet's IT infrastructure to grind to a halt? If your name is CrowdStrike, apparently that involves offering $10 UberEats gift vouchers — some of which don’t actually seem to be working (via TechCrunch).
For those that don’t know, the CrowdStrike outage started on July 19, with Windows machines across the world crashing and being sent into an infinite boot loop — and a perpetual Blue Screen of Death. This was caused by a CrowdStrike software update, which could then only be fixed by manually deleting certain files from each individual machine. Needless to say, the cleanup was a huge undertaking.
Sources told TechCrunch that they received an email from CrowdStrike offering the voucher because it “recognizes the additional work that the July 19 incident has caused”, adding “to express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!”
One post on X noted that this voucher was worth £7.75, or around $10, while others reported that they received error messages during redemption — claiming that the vouchers had been canceled and were no longer valid. Oh boy.
Considering the CrowdStrike-induced outage is estimated to have caused billions of dollars in damages, a $10 gift card is the absolute furthest thing from an apology. It also reeks of those terrible workplaces where bosses offer employees a single slice of pizza in lieu of bonuses or overtime pay “as a reward for their hard work." The fact that some of these gift cards didn’t even work just adds insult to injury.
You may be thinking that this could be the work of opportunistic scammers, trying to take advantage of the situation with the promise of gift cards. But CrowdStrike did confirm to TechCrunch that they were the ones that sent out the gift cards, claiming that “We did send these to our teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation. Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage rates.”
A lot of questions need to be answered in the aftermath of the CrowdStrike outage last week, and the CEO is being called to testify in front of the House Homeland Security Committee. Meanwhile, Microsoft has blamed the EU for the disaster, due to legal restrictions that prevent it walling off the Windows operating system — the same way Apple has done. This means security software specialists have the same level of access to Windows as Microsoft.
CrowdStrike isn’t the only company in hot water. Delta is facing a federal investigation over the outage, which saw the airline cancel 478 flights and delay a further 1,440. Figures that are reportedly more than those from other airlines.
So this story isn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon, even if the damage itself seems to be mostly over. We can only hope that CrowdStrike doesn’t continue to make things worse with token gestures that are, frankly, worse than nothing.
