DEF CON CrowdStrike's president received commendations from DEF CON attendees after accepting the Pwnie Award for Most Epic Fail, following the recent global IT outage caused by the infamous Falcon sensor update.

The award's recipient was never really in doubt. The list of nominations for each Pwnie was released five days after the incident began and as such, there could only ever be one winner of this in 2024.

While every other award entry has a shortlist of nominations, each with detailed descriptions of the reasons for their inclusion, the Epic Fail category simply lists "lol" and "lmao even" as the contenders.

CrowdStrike has quite rightly attracted a flood of criticism for its role in what is likely to be the IT event of the year. However, its president Michael Sentonas took the stage at the annual awards ceremony hosted at DEF CON this weekend, confidently gripped the ironically large trophy, and faced the embarrassment head-on.

"Definitely not the award to be proud of receiving," Sentonas said to conference delegates in his acceptance speech. "I think the team was surprised when I said straight away that I'd come and get it because we got this horribly wrong. We've said that a number of different times and it's super important to own it when you do things well. It's super important to own it when you do things horribly wrong, which we did in this case.

"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.

"So, from that perspective, I will say thank you, and I will take the trophy, and we'll put it in the right place, and make sure everybody sees it. So, thank you."

The speech and Sentonas' candor were met with rousing applause, and the occasional lone woos that emanated from the crowd during the president's acceptance, growing louder with each clap. It was a showing of appreciation from a room full of people whose weeks were most likely ruined by CrowdStrike last month.

While DEF CON-ers were perhaps appeased by the words, in the background CrowdStrike customers like Delta continue to rage about the ordeal that it claims cost the airline half a billion dollars.

In fact, Delta recently accused the embattled security vendor of trying to "shift the blame" for its IT outage - a takeaway opposing that of the DEF CON crowd who attended the prez's speech.

It follows a three-way standoff between Delta, figuratively wielding a gun each at Microsoft and CrowdStrike, both barrels loaded with threats of litigation, accusing both of wrongdoing after it was affected especially by the outage.

Microsoft and CrowdStrike have fired back at Delta. Satya Nadella and Microsoft's legal rep calimed the company offered Delta IT support every day between 19-24 July but was ignored, before alleging Delta's IT environment was in need of modernization.

CrowdStrike also went on the offensive following Delta's accusations of gross negligence, rejecting these claims, and saying it would aggressively defend any case brought against it.

Similarly to Microsoft, the letter CrowdStrike's lawyer sent to Delta also alleged that the airline's IT might not be up to scratch and said if Delta were to proceed with a trial, it would have to lay bare exactly why that might be the case.

Like Microsoft, CrowdStrike also claimed Delta refused its offers of support - something Delta inturn claimed came too little, too late. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/12/crowdstrike_president_cheered_following_acceptance/