CrowdStrike offers $10 gift card apology for $5bn outage

Some of the Uber Eats gift cards offered to partners were flagged as fraud

A Mercedes team member, whose shirt bears the logo of team sponsor Crowdstrike, looks on as Windows error screens are seen on their pitwall at the F1 Grand Prix of Hungary on 19 July, 2024 in Budapest, Hungary (Getty Images)

CrowdStrike has offered some of its partners a $10 Uber Eats gift card as an apology for the massive global outage that crashed millions of computers last week.

The cyber security firm sent an email to its “teammates and partners” in the wake of Friday’s disruption, which one insurer estimated will cost major companies more than $5 billion (£3.9bn) in financial losses.

“We recognise the additional work that the 19 July incident has caused. And for that, we send our heartfelt thanks and apologies for the inconvenience,” the email stated, which recipients shared on Reddit forums and on X (formerly Twitter).

“To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!”

Some gift cards were flagged as fraud by Uber Eats, Engadget reported, with those trying to use them greeted with a message saying that the offer had been rescinded by the issuing partner.

“We did send these [gift cards] to our teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation,” CrowdStrike said in a statement. “Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage rates.”

CrowdStrike blamed the issue on a faulty update to its security software, which caused computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system to be stuck in the so-called “blue screen of death”.

Devices required a manual reboot in order to fix the critical software failure, which impacted approximately 8.5 million computers worldwide.

The bug brought global air travel to a standstill, disrupted hospital operations and knocked some TV stations offline.

Insurer Parametrix estimated on Wednesday that the outage resulted in $5.4 billion in losses for the 25 per cent of US Fortune 500 companies that were impacted, and around $15 billion for companies globally.

“The event highlights the critical dependency of major corporations on cloud services, and the systemic risks posed by such disruptions,” Parametrix’s report on the incident stated.