Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said Monday it sued Delta Air Lines in US District Court in Georgia after a faulty software update caused a global outage in July.
The July 19 incident caused flights to be canceled worldwide and impacted industries including banks, healthcare, media companies and hotel chains.
CrowdStrike said it filed the lawsuit to clarify that CrowdStrike did not cause the damages claimed by Delta, and that Delta has repeatedly refused assistance from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft. Delta did not immediately comment on CrowdStrike’s lawsuit.
CrowdStrike is seeking a declaratory judgment and legal fees.
Delta’s lawsuit, filed Friday in Fulton County Superior Court, calls CrowdStrike’s faulty software updates “disastrous” and says the company “forced its customers into untested and faulty updates, causing 8.5 million worldwide outages.” More than 100,000 Microsoft Windows-based computers crashed.” ,
Delta said the faulty update caused 7,000 flights to be canceled, disrupted the travel plans of 1.3 million customers and cost the carrier more than $500 million.
CrowdStrike’s lawsuit was also filed Friday, saying Delta’s own response and technology caused delays in the carrier’s ability to resume normal operations.
CrowdStrike’s lawsuit reiterated its argument that it has minimal liability, which Delta rejected.
Delta said CrowdStrike is liable for out-of-pocket damages in excess of $500 million, as well as unspecified lost profits, expenses – including legal fees – reputational harm and future revenue loss.
The incident prompted the US Department of Transportation to launch an investigation.
“If CrowdStrike had tested the faulty update on even a single computer before deployment, the computer would have crashed,” Delta’s lawsuit says.
Delta said it has invested billions of dollars in information technology licensing and infrastructure.
Last month, a senior CrowdStrike executive apologized before Congress for a faulty software update.
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