After a botched CrowdStrike update brought millions of computers down, the company offered its partners $10 Uber Eats gift cards as an apology, reported TechCrunch The gesture has sparked controversy as users question its appropriateness following the outage that has disrupted airports, hospitals and businesses around the world.
Image source: Microsoft
On Tuesday, the company sent out emails offering a gift card, acknowledging the incident. The email said: “We understand that there has been some extra work involved due to the July 19 incident. For that, we offer our sincere thanks and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. To show our appreciation, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!” The email was sent from a CrowdStrike corporate email address on behalf of Daniel Bernard, the company’s director of business development.
Image source: CrowdStrike / Techcrunch.com
However, the next day, some users who posted the gift card information reported that when they tried to redeem the offer, they received an error message stating that the voucher was invalid. TechCrunch decided to check this information and saw an error message on the Uber Eats page: “The gift card has been cancelled by the issuer.” CrowdStrike representatives have not yet commented on the situation.
Recall that last Friday, CrowdStrike released an update to its software that, due to an internal error, disabled about 8.5 million Windows devices. The update resulted in the affected computers being unable to boot and instead being greeted by the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSoD).
The disruption caused delays at airports in Amsterdam, Berlin, Dubai and London, as well as across the United States. Some hospitals were forced to suspend operations.
Since the outage began, CrowdStrike has been regularly posting updates on its efforts to understand what caused it. On Wednesday, the company said that an error in the update validation process itself allowed the code to “pass validation despite the issue.” The company also issued an apology on behalf of its CEO, George Kurtz, and its chief security officer, Shawn Henry.
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