CrowdStrike CEO Called Before Congress Over Worldwide IT Outage

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has been called to testify before Congress regarding last week’s worldwide IT outage caused by the company’s software update.

Lawmakers on the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection have written to Kurtz, calling on the executive to provide details about the incident.

Last week, CrowdStrike published an update to its security software, only for it to cause systems running on Microsoft Windows all over the world to glitch and completely crash.

Airlines across the globe were grounded and businesses were locked out of their payroll software as PCs displayed the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death.”

“The American public deserve[s] to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking,” Congressmen Mark Green and Andrew Garbarino wrote in a letter calling Kurtz to testify before the House.

“While we appreciate CrowdStrike’s response and coordination with stakeholders, we cannot ignore the magnitude of this incident, which some have claimed is the largest IT outage in history,” the lawmakers wrote.

In the days following the incident, CrowdStrike published a fix to its faulty software while Microsoft issued a recovery tool that creates a bootable USB drive, enabling IT teams to recover their machines.

Related:Global Microsoft Outage Grounds Flights, Disrupts Businesses Worldwide

“This incident must serve as a broader warning about the national security risks associated with network dependency,” the lawmakers wrote in their summons. “Malicious cyber actors backed by nation states, such as China and Russia, are watching our response to this incident closely.

“Protecting our critical infrastructure requires us to learn from this incident and ensure that it does not happen again.”

Kurtz has been called to appear before the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection on July 24.

CrowdStrike told The Verge that the company “is actively in contact” with lawmakers about appearing before relevant committees.

Worldwide IT Outage: Where Are We At

The CrowdStrike CEO has apologized, saying the company “understand[s] the gravity of the situation,” in a post on X (Twitter).

The company’s share price has since plummeted, dropping by 13% on the first day of trading following the incident.

Shawn Henry, the company’s chief security officer and the FBI’s former executive assistant director said on LinkedIn the outage caused the confidence CrowdStrike has built up over the years “was lost in buckets within hours.”

IT systems across the globe have slowly come back online, but many systems had to be manually rebooted — an arduous and time-consuming process.

Related:Microsoft Accepts Responsibility for Cybersecurity Breach, Vows Stronger Measures

Airlines were hit hardest by the outage with flights, but most are back up and running except for one: Delta.

Delta passengers are still facing delays though the company said it’s working 24/7 to get online as more than half of its IT systems are having to be manually repaired.

“We’ve got everyone around the company working around the clock to get this operation where it needs to be,” Ed Bastian, Delta’s CEO said in a message to staff. “Keep taking great care of our customers and each other in the coming days.” 

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said the agency has received “hundreds of complaints” from passengers about Delta’s continued disruptions and “unacceptable customer service.”

“I have made clear to Delta that we will hold them to all applicable passenger protections,” Buttigieg said on X.

The outage only impacted systems hosted on Windows, leaving Mac and Linux users unaffected.