CrowdStrike Fires Back At Delta After the Airline Continues Its Narrative of Blame

The Delta Air Lines IT meltdown has been widely covered (more here). A CrowdStrike software update crippled airlines, hotels, and banks. These companies all managed to get their systems back online in a matter of days with the exception of Delta. The airline struggled for around a week because of its dated crew scheduling software, but it placed the blame almost entirely on CrowdStrike with its CEO saying that he would seek damages to help offset the $500 million that the carrier lost (more here). Now, CrowdStrike is firing back and saying that Delta created a misleading narrative surrounding the meltdown.

New: CrowdStrike accuses Delta of creating a “misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage.” Letter from CrowdStrike’s outside counsel: pic.twitter.com/OMD3iY6U9M

— David Slotnick (@David_Slotnick) August 5, 2024

The letter above was posted on X by David Slotnick of The Points Guy. It’s interesting to see CrowdStrike challenging Delta. The main body of the missive reads:

CrowdStrike reiterates its apology to Delta, its employees, and its customers, and is empathetic to the circumstances they faced. However, CrowdStrike is highly disappointed by Delta’s suggestion that CrowdStrike acted inappropriately and strongly rejects any allegations that it was grossly negligent or committed willful misconduct with respect to the Channel File 291 incident. Your suggestion that CrowdStrike failed to do testing and validation is contradicted by the very information on which you rely from CrowdStrike’s Preliminary Post Incident Review.

 

CrowdStrike worked tirelessly to help its customers restore impacted systems and resume services to their customers. Within hours of the incident, CrowdStrike reached out to Delta to offer assistance and ensure Delta was aware of an available remediation. Additionally, CrowdStrike’s CEO personally reached out to Delta’s CEO to offer onsite assistance, but received no response. CrowdStrike followed up with Delta on the offer for onsite support and was told that the onsite resources were not needed. To this day, CrowdStrike continues to work closely and professionally with the Delta information security team.

 

Delta’s public threat of litigation distracts from this work and has contributed to a misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage. Should Delta pursue this path, Delta will have to explain to the public, its shareholders, and ultimately a jury why CrowdStrike took responsibility for its actions — swiftly, transparently, and constructively — while Delta did not. Among other things, Delta will need to explain:

• Why Delta’s competitors, facing similar challenges, all restored operations much faster.
• Why Delta turned down free onsite help from CrowdStrike, professionally who assisted many other customers to restore operations much more quickly than Delta.
• That any liability by CrowdStrike is contractually capped at an amount in the single-digit millions.
• Every action, or failure to act, by Delta or its third-party service providers, related to the Channel File 291 incident.
• The design and operational resiliency capabilities of Delta’s IT infrastructure, including decisions by Delta with respect to systemwide upgrades, and all other contributory factors that relate in any way to the damage Delta allegedly suffered.

In light of Delta’s July 29 letter, CrowdStrike must also demand that Delta preserve all documents, records, and communications of any kind — including emails, text messages, and other communications — in the possession, custody, or control of Delta, its officers and directors, and employees concerning, but not limited to, the items listed above. As I am sure you can appreciate, while litigation would be unfortunate, CrowdStrike will respond aggressively, if forced to do so, in order to protect its shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders.”

CrowdStrike has a valid argument and it has kicked the ball back to Delta. We’ll have to wait and see how Delta responds, but CrowdStrike looks to have taken the high ground here even going so far as to have its CEO reach out to Delta’s CEO to offer onsite assistance and get no reply. Maybe this happened while Delta’s CEO was jetting off to the Olympics (more here).

Anthony’s Take: Will Delta pursue litigation as previously mentioned or will this letter be enough for the carrier to call off its plans? I’m not an attorney and in no position to give legal advice, but CrowdStrike seems to have a good narrative and Delta will be forced to show that it was in fact not its own fault for having aging software.

(Featured Image Credit: Lukas Souza.)