After crashing 8.5 million computers, CrowdStrike says sorry to its partners with a $10 Uber Eats gift card, which was also broken
"Your next coffee or late night snack is on us!"
If you were out last Friday, you may have encountered some difficulty shopping, getting a coffee, or, god forbid, trying to catch a flight due to a bug that crashed 8.5 million Microsoft devices and messed up a few Linux-powered computers.
After realising that the core issue came from a configuration file in an update for CrowdStrike's Falcom platform, the cybersecurity company has been working around the clock to fix the issue, and things seem mostly back to normal. As a partial apology for its huge error, Crowdstrike has been sending out $10 Uber Eats vouchers to its partners and teammates (via TechCrunch).
The email was sent out and also posted to X, though it has since been taken down: "To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or a late night snack is on us!"
Another recipient posted the voucher to X, revealing that in the UK, the total credit is £7.75. Depending on where you are, a good chunk of that money would probably go to the delivery charge, and many restaurants on Uber Eats have a minimum order of around £9—£10.
A CrowdStrike partner, Louis Corriero, voiced his upset on LinkedIn: "The gesture of a cup of coffee or Uber Eats credit as an apology doesn't seem to make up for the tens of thousands lost in man hours and customer trust due to the July 19 incident."
But many users couldn't even get the voucher to work, as putting the code in would just relay them to an error message. "We did send these to our teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation," CrowdStrike spokesperson Kevin Benacci tells TechCrunch. "Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage rates." Since this, the problem has been worked out, so if you do have a voucher, it should work now.
The fallout from last week has also more or less been fixed. At first, there was a technical fix for the faulty CrowdStrike update that required direct access to every device affected by the bug. This was far from a quick solution, as bigger organisations had to dedicate a large amount of time to fixing individual devices. However, luckily, Microsoft released a simpler fix: a recovery tool that has two repair options "to help IT admins expedite the repair process," according to Microsoft support.
CrowdStrike's CEO also apologised for the global IT outage: "I want to sincerely apologize directly to all of you for the outage. All of CrowdStrike understands the gravity and impact of the situation."