Microsoft said its CEO, Satya Nadella, contacted the head of Delta Air Lines directly during a global Windows outage caused by a problematic CrowdStrike security software update. But, as The Register reports, he never received a response to the offer of help. Now Microsoft lawyers are defending it against the charges brought by the airline – it intends to recover $500 million from Microsoft and CrowdStrike.
Last month, CrowdStrike released an update that caused a Blue Screen of Death on 8.5 million Windows systems. Later, Microsoft blamed the European Union, which legally determined the developer’s obligation to provide low-level access to the OS kernel to the creators of third-party programs, which largely led to catastrophic failures.
Delta had to manually restore 40,000 servers, and the outage forced the cancellation of 5,000 flights. Other airlines were also affected, as well as railroads, banks, and medical organizations, but it took Delta a very long time to restore their systems. The CrowdStrike failure exposed other Delta IT problems. Thus, the company’s information systems were not flexible enough at a critical moment.
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CrowdStrike’s lawyers also reported a “misleading narrative” that CrowdStrike was responsible for Delta’s IT solutions and its response to the outage, DataCenter Dynamics reported. It is reported that CrowdStrike offered technical assistance to Delta – the head of the company, George Kurtz, personally contacted the CEO of Delta, but, like Satya Nadella, was not given a response. Crowdstrike expects Delta to explain to the public, shareholders and possibly the court why CrowdStrike should be held accountable for Delta’s actions and conduct during the incident.
A Microsoft spokesperson said Delta’s comments were “incomplete, false, misleading and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation.” It is emphasized that Delta did not use Microsoft cloud services, instead entering into a deal with IBM in 2021 and Amazon (AWS) in 2022. In other words, the responsibility for restoring systems officially fell to other cloud operators.
According to preliminary estimates from Microsoft, Delta, unlike its competitors, has not modernized its IT infrastructure. The company is asked to disclose exactly how it used IBM and AWS services. The U.S. Department of Transportation has launched its own investigation into the outage of Delta and other companies.