In July, the Crowdstrike cybersecurity service sent out a faulty update to its Windows PC-based services. The update caused millions of Windows PCs worldwide to crash and show BSOD (Blue Screens of Death) messages. It shut down a number of businesses and even critical government systems like 911 services and other for an extended period.
So when this past weekend"s DEF CON hacker conference was held in Las Vegas, one of the event"s award winners was never in doubt. The 2024 Pwnie Award for Most Epic Fail was awarded to CrowdStrike. What was surprising was that the company"s president, Michael Sentonas, was at Def CON and accepted that award on stage.
CrowdStrike accepting the @PwnieAwards for “most epic fail” at @defcon. Class act. pic.twitter.com/e7IgYosHAE
— Dominic White 👾 (@singe) August 10, 2024
The Register reports that during his acceptance speech, Sentonas admitted that winning Most Epic Fail was "Definitely not the award to be proud of receiving." He also said that the team at CrowdStrike was surprised that he decided to come to DEF CON to accept this award "because we got this horribly wrong."
He added:
The reason why I wanted the trophy is: I"m heading back to headquarters. I"m going to take the trophy with me. It"s going to sit pride of place because I want every CrowdStriker who comes to work to see it because our goal is to protect people and we got this wrong, and I want to make sure that everybody understands these things can"t happen and that"s what this community is about.
CrowdStrike posted its own final report on what happened with the botched update last week, and pledged to take steps to make sure it did not happen again. It also announced it would bring in "two independent third-party software security vendors" that will take a look at the company"s code, quality systems, and updates, but did not state when their investigation will be complete.