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Worldwide flight cancellations resulted from the July 19 incident, which also had an impact on the banking, healthcare, media, and hotel chains industries.
Following a worldwide outage in July caused by a defective software update, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike announced on Monday that it had filed a lawsuit against Delta Air Lines in US District Court in Georgia.
Worldwide flight cancellations resulted from the July 19 incident, which also had an impact on the banking, healthcare, media, and hotel chains industries.
According to CrowdStrike, the lawsuit was filed to demonstrate that CrowdStrike did not cause the harm that Delta alleges, and that CrowdStrike and Microsoft were repeatedly turned down for help by Delta. Regarding CrowdStrike’s lawsuit, Delta refrained from commenting right away.
In addition to legal fees, CrowdStrike is requesting a declaratory judgement.
The defective CrowdStrike software update was described as “catastrophic” in Delta’s lawsuit, which was filed in Fulton County Superior Court on Friday. The company “forced untested and faulty updates to its customers, causing more than 8.5 million Microsoft Windows-based computers around the world to crash.”
According to Delta, the flawed update cost the airline over $500 million, disrupted the travel plans of 1.3 million customers, and resulted in 7,000 flight cancellations.
In its lawsuit, which was also submitted on Friday, CrowdStrike claimed that Delta’s own technology and response caused delays in the carrier’s ability to return to regular operations.
CrowdStrike’s lawsuit reiterated its contention that it has minimal liability, something Delta rejected.
According to Delta, CrowdStrike is responsible for more than $500 million in out-of-pocket losses in addition to unidentified lost profits, expenses (including legal fees), damage to the company’s reputation, and potential revenue loss.
The incident prompted the US Transportation Department to open an investigation.
According to Delta’s lawsuit, “the computer would have crashed if CrowdStrike had tested the faulty update on even one computer before deployment.”
Delta said it has invested billions of dollars in information technology licensing and infrastructure.
A senior CrowdStrike executive apologised for the problematic software update in front of Congress last month.