Delta Launches $500M Lawsuit Against CrowdStrike

Delta argues that it lost hundreds of million of dollars in downtime and other costs in the aftermath of the incident, while CrowdStrike says it isn't liable for more than $10 million.

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a delta airlines plane in the sky
Alamy

At a Glance

  • The lawsuit highlights the critical need for thorough testing of security updates.
  • Cybersecurity providers and clients need clear protocols and responsive support frameworks to mitigate downtime impacts.
  • Delta's pursuit of financial recovery and punitive damages reflects the evolving landscape of cyber liability.

Delta Air Lines is suing CrowdStrike to recover the $500 million in revenue it lost due to the Crowstrike outage earlier this year, which led to an assortment of issues and disrupted businesses, airlines, healthcare providers, and more.

The cause of the infamous outage that occurred in July was a defective threat intelligence update for the CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor, a cloud-based endpoint detection and prevention software. After investigating the issue, CrowdStrike reported that its engineering team had discovered a bug in the memory scanning prevention policy, a flaw that was not identified during testing stages. That ultimately led to Microsoft servers displaying the "blue screen of death" across the world, and collective disarray in response.

At the time of the outage, Delta reported that it had to cancel thousands of flights — about 7,000 between July 19 and July 24 — affecting 1.3 million customers and prompting multiple class-action lawsuits.

In its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, the airline estimated that recovery from the outage would cost around $170 million.
Now, the airline is seeking legal recourse to regain its lost funds, plus punitive damages for the outage.

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About the Authors

Kristina Beek

Associate Editor, Dark Reading

Dark Reading

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