technology : Company that caused global techno meltdown gives out $10 vouchers to say sorry - and they don't work

newsonline - The firm behind the global IT outage that cost companies billions, ground 5% of the world's air traffic and brought NHS systems to their knees has given out $10 food vouchers to say sorry.

And for some, they don't even work.

CrowdStrike sought to thank and apologise to its 'teammates' and partners for the extra workload resulting from the outage last Friday which knocked out millions of computers worldwide.

According to a screenshot said to be part of the thank you email sent out to staff, the firm recognised the "additional work" the 19 July incident caused "and for that, we send our heartfelt thanks and apologies for the inconvenience".

But some recipients posted on social media that it hadn't worked for them.

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TechCrunch, who originally reported the story, said they tried applying one of the gift cards but an error came up on the Uber Eats page saying it "has been cancelled by the issuing party and is no longer valid."

A CrowdStrike spokesperson said in a statement to Sky News: "CrowdStrike did not send gift cards to customers or clients.

"We did send these to our teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation.

"Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage rates," they added.

Last week's outage, which has been described as the world's worst as its effects are still being felt today, was caused by a faulty software update which affected an estimated 8.5 million Microsoft Windows PCs devices. It caused delays for airports, broadcasters, hospitals and businesses.

Problems came to light soon after the latest version of CrowdStrikes Falcon sensor software was rolled out on Friday.

The update was meant to make systems more secure against hacking, but instead caused devices to display a "blue screen of death" due to faulty code.

In an update on Wednesday on its investigation into the crisis, CrowdStrike said a code fault had slipped past its own safety procedures, forcing computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system to crash.

CrowdStrike added that a "new check" had since been put in place in a bid to prevent a repeat of the issue.

The extent of the economic damage is still being assessed and may never be truly known.

A report by insurer Parametrix estimated on Wednesday that the total direct financial loss facing US Fortune 500 companies, excluding Microsoft, was $5.4bn.