On Jul. 19, 2024 (Singapore time), an outage struck IT systems around the world.

The global IT outage hit airlines, banking systems and the media in countries like Japan, New Zealand, Australia and India.

The disruption, linked to Microsoft's Windows, stemmed from an issue with cybersecurity software firm CrowdStrike.

The outage affected various systems in Singapore, including Changi Airport, Scoot, Singapore Airlines, SingPost, and even several Don Don Donki outlets.

In response, CrowdStrike is giving out US$10 (around S$13) Uber Eats gift cards to affected partners, TechCrunch reported.

According to TechCrunch, several people received the gift card from CrowdStrike on Jul. 23 (U.S. time), along with an email stating that the company recognises “the additional work that the July 19 incident has caused."

User Sheel Mohnot posted to X a screenshot of the email:

The email reads: "To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late-night snack is on us!"

Gift card did not work

Apparently, for some, the gift card did not work.

On Jul. 24 (U.S. time), some who tried to redeem the gift card received an error message saying that the voucher had been cancelled, TechCrunch reported.

TechCrunch also tested the voucher and saw that the Uber Eats page says that the gift card “has been cancelled by the issuing party and is no longer valid”.

CrowdStrike spokesperson Kevin Benacci told TechCrunch that the vouchers did not work because Uber flagged them "as fraud because of high usage rates".

What caused the outage

CrowdStrike released a statement on Jul. 24 (U.S. time) explaining what happened to cause the outage.

On Jul. 19, CrowdStrike released an update for Windows systems.

The update was part of regular operations, and was meant to maintain the protection systems of its cybersecurity platform, called Falcon.

The update, however, led to a Windows system crash.

Windows hosts running sensor version 7.11 and above that were online and received the update on Jul. 19 between 12:09pm (Singapore time) and 1:27pm were affected. 

Systems that were offline during the update, or came online only after 1:27pm, were not affected.

George Kurtz, chief executive officer of Crowdstrike, issued a statement on Jul. 19 apologising for the incident:

I want to sincerely apologize directly to all of you for the outage. All of CrowdStrike understands the gravity and impact of the situation.

We quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, allowing us to focus diligently on restoring customer systems as our highest priority.

Top photo from Canva, Anne Park/Medium, Kypros Politis/LinkedIn.