CrowdStrike faces backlash as ‘thank you’ gift cards are blocked

An attempt by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to thank workers who tackled the recent global IT outage with a $10 UberEats voucher hit a stumbling block after Uber flagged the gesture as potential fraud.

CrowdStrike confirmed that it sent the $10 voucher to “teammates and partners” who helped customers affected by a faulty software update it issued.

The failure paralysed 8.5m devices around the world and led to chaos at airports, hospital appointment cancellations and TV channel blackouts.

The tech news website TechCrunch reported that some recipients encountered an error message when trying to make use of their voucher, which said they had been cancelled by the issuing party and were no longer valid.

A CrowdStrike spokesperson said Uber had blocked the cards after high usage rates triggered a fraud alert.

“CrowdStrike did not send gift cards to customers or clients,” said the spokesperson. “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.”

In the email in which the voucher was issued, as reported by TechCrunch, CrowdStrike said: “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.”

On Wednesday an insurer estimated that the botched update would cost US Fortune 500 companies $5.4bn , with banking, airline and healthcare companies among the worst affected.

CrowdStrike added in a blog post on Wednesday that the primary cause of the failure was a bug in an update that CrowdStrike pushed to its Falcon product, which is supposed to protect businesses from cyber-attacks.

CrowdStrike also outlined measures it would take to prevent a recurrence, including staggering the rollout of updates, giving customers more control over when and where they occur, and providing more details about planned updates.

Air France KLM said on Thursday that it expected a hit of about €10m from the incident. The US-based Delta Air Lines appeared the most badly affected carrier, having cancelled more than 6,000 flights since Friday, prompting the US transportation department to open an investigation “to ensure the rights of Delta’s passengers are upheld”.