AUSTIN, Texas–In what may be a finalist for the Irony of 2024 Award, 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, which led to shutdowns of systems running Microsoft applications across the country.
‘Chaos’ Created
As CUToday.info reported, the failure paralyzed 8.5 million 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message when trying to make use of their voucher, which said they had been cancelled by the issuing party and were no longer valid.