Delta sues CrowdStrike over software update that caused massive flight disruptions

Delta Air Lines sued cybersecurity company CrowdStrike in a Georgia court on Friday after a global outage in July caused mass flight cancellations, disrupted the travel plans of 1.3 million customers and cost the carrier more than $500 million.

Delta’s lawsuit, filed in Fulton County Superior Court, called CrowdStrike’s faulty software update “catastrophic” and said the company “forced untested and faulty updates on its customers, causing more than 8.5 million Microsoft Windows-based computers around the world crashed.”

The July 19 incident led to worldwide flight cancellations and affects industries around the world, including banking, healthcare, media companies and hotel chains.

“Delta’s claims are based on debunked misinformation, demonstrate a lack of understanding of how modern cybersecurity works, and reflect a desperate attempt to shift blame for the slow recovery to its inability to modernize legacy IT infrastructure” , CrowdStrike said late Friday.

Delta, which says it has purchased CrowdStrike products since 2022, says the outage led to to cancel 7,000 flightsaffecting 1.3 million passengers over five days.

Delta said CrowdStrike is liable for more than $500 million in out-of-pocket losses, as well as an unspecified amount of lost profits, expenses, including attorneys’ fees and “damage to reputation and future revenue losses.”

The incident was the reason the United States Department of Transportation to open an investigation.

“If CrowdStrike had tested the defective update on even one computer before deploying it, the computer would have crashed,” Delta’s lawsuit said. “Because the defective update could not be removed remotely, CrowdStrike crippled Delta operations and caused massive delays for Delta customers.”

Delta said that as part of its IT planning and infrastructure, it has invested billions of dollars “in licensing and building some of the best technology solutions in the airline industry.”

CrowdStrike has wondered why Delta did so much worse than other airlines and said it has minimal liability, something Delta rejected.

Last month, a senior executive at CrowdStrike apologized to Congress for the faulty software update.

Adam Meyers, senior vice president at CrowdStrike, said the company released a content configuration update for its Falcon Sensor security software that led to system crashes worldwide. “We are deeply sorry that this happened and we are committed to preventing it from happening again,” Meyers said.

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