The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is facing more backlash after last week's global tech outage sent banks, retailers and airlines into turmoil. But the latest criticism isn't necessarily related to the blackout itself; it's about how the company is apparently choosing to make up for it.
As a thank you to its partners, some of whom are still helping customers out of the mess, CrowdStrike has reportedly offered $10 Uber Eats gift cards, sources told Business Insider and TechCrunch.
The code to access the gifted voucher came alongside an email from the firm, which was posted on X but has since been deleted. In it, CrowdStrike said it wanted to send its "heartfelt thanks and apologies" for the "inconvenience" and "additional work" the July 19 outage caused. It concluded by saying the partner's "next cup of coffee or late night snack" was on them as a token of gratitude.
One X user posted a screenshot of his UberEats voucher showing a total of £7.75, or roughly $10, and a message from the issuer that read, "Thank you from the CrowdStrike team." But some claimed when they tried to use the voucher, UberEats said it was invalid because the issuer had canceled it. A recipient told Business Insider their voucher was canceled about four hours after receiving the initial email but was later reinstated after the company sent another email.
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A CrowdStrike spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider and TechCrunch that it did send the gift cards to partners of its Accelerate Program, who sell and manage the software for customers and have been helping them in the outage. But the spokesperson said high usage rates caused Uber to flag the vouchers as fraud, explaining the reason they were initially canceled.
CrowdStrike said Wednesday that last week's massive outage was caused by an undetected bug in a software update meant to diagnose potential threats. The bug caused certain Windows operating systems to crash to the infamous "Blue Screen of Death" and affected least 8.5 million machines relied upon by hospitals, government agencies, TV stations and more.
Some businesses have still not fully recovered from the downtime, and that's caught the attention of federal regulators. On Wednesday, Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced a federal investigation against Delta Air Lines, and lawmakers said they want to hear testimony from CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz about what happened.
"All too often these days, a single glitch results in a system-wide outage, affecting industries from healthcare and airlines to banks and auto-dealers," said U.S. Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan on Sunday. "Millions of people and businesses pay the price. These incidents reveal how concentration can create fragile systems."
