CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm whose botched update crashed millions of computers around the world last week, is offering $10 Uber Eats gift cards to its partners as an apology, according to multiple people who said they received the cards and sources who were aware of the gift card offerings.
On Tuesday, a source told TechCrunch that they received an email from CrowdStrike offering gift cards because the company recognized “additional work caused by the July 19 incident.”
“We sincerely thank you and apologize for any inconvenience,” the email read, according to screenshots shared by the source. The same email was also posted to X by another person, who wrote: “To show our appreciation, we'll treat you to your next coffee or midnight snack!”
Screenshot of email CrowdStrike sent to partners after the July 19 incident (Image: TechCrunch)
The email was sent in the name of the company's chief operating officer, Daniel Bernard, according to a screenshot of the email seen by TechCrunch. X's post said that in the UK, the voucher was worth 7.75 pounds, or about $10 at current exchange rates.
Some people who posted about gift cards on Wednesday said they tried to redeem them only to see an error message saying their voucher had been canceled. When TechCrunch checked the vouchers, they saw an error message on the Uber Eats page saying the gift card had been “canceled by the issuer and is invalid.”
CrowdStrike did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Microsoft said that around 8.5 million Windows devices were rendered unusable on Friday when CrowdStrike released a flawed update that caused affected computers to halt with the infamous “Blue Screen of Death,” or BSOD (the bright blue error screen and message that appears when Windows crashes or is unable to load due to a critical software failure).
The outage caused delays at airports in Amsterdam, Berlin, Dubai and London, as well as across the United States, forced the cancellation of operations at several hospitals and paralyzed countless businesses around the world.
Have more information about the CrowdStrike outage? You can securely contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai from a non-work device via Signal (+1 917 257 1382), Telegram, Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You can also contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.
CrowdStrike has given regular updates on its efforts to figure out what caused the massive outage since it began on Friday. In its update on Wednesday, the company said a bug occurred during the process of checking whether an update was ready to be released to customer devices, causing the problematic code to “pass validation despite containing problematic content data.”
The company also released a statement of apology from CEO George Kurtz and chief security officer Sean Henry.
“Everyone at CrowdStrike understands the severity and impact of this incident,” Kurtz said in a message posted on the company's website. “Nothing is more important to me than the trust and confidence our customers and partners have in CrowdStrike. As we resolve this incident, my commitment is to provide full transparency about how it happened and the steps we are taking to ensure something like this never happens again.”
“We have disappointed you all and for that we are deeply sorry,” Henry wrote on LinkedIn.
“I have been in this profession for nearly 40 years and my goal has always been to 'protect good people from evil,'” Henry wrote. “The past two days have been the toughest 48 hours I have faced in over 12 years. The trust I had built up bit by bit over the years was quickly lost in a matter of hours, and it was truly devastating.”