Microsoft responds to Delta's threats over $500 million CrowdStrike outage

It was only a few days ago Delta Air Lines' CEO sat down for an interview to candidly express how catastrophic the CrowdStrike outage was for the airline, which the CEO said cost the company $500 million in revenue.

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For those who don't know, here is a quick recap of what happened. CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company that has its software on millions of Windows machines, rolled out a faulty update to its Falcon sensor, which operates in the kernel of a Windows machine. The fault in the driver caused an error in the kernel, ultimately leading to an estimated 8.5 million Windows machines being thrown into infinite boot loops.

Delta was hit the hardest of any airline, with the company's CEO saying it was required to manually reset 40,000 servers and cancel more than 5,000 flights. Delta has hired a new legal team to pursue damages from Microsoft and CrowdStrike for the loss of revenue, costs associated with the outage, and brand damages.

Reports now indicate that an August 6 letter to lawyer David Boies, who represents Delta, from Microsoft's legal rep Mark Cheffo, rebuttals Delta's claims and describes the airline's accusations as "false" and "misleading". Additionally, the letter states Microsoft repeatedly offered to help Delta every day between July 19 and July 24, all of which, including a letter from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to Delta CEO Ed Bastian, were ignored by the airlines, according to Microsoft's lawyer.

Furthermore, Microsoft took this opportunity to throw a jab at the IT infrastructure Delta has in place to keep its business afloat. Redmond made a comparison between how long it took Delta's competitors to get back up and running to operational standards versus Delta themselves, with Microsoft specifically pointing out Delta's lack of "modernized" IT infrastructure.

"Microsoft continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the CrowdStrike incident to understand why other airlines were able to fully restore business operations so much faster than Delta, including American Airlines and United Airlines. Our preliminary review suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors, apparently has not modernized its IT infrastructure, either for the benefit of its customers or for its pilots and flight attendants," reads the letter

"Delta has a long track record of investing in safe, reliable and elevated service for our customers and employees," a Delta spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement to The Register. "Since 2016, Delta has invested billions of dollars in IT capital expenditures, in addition to the billions spent annually in IT operating costs."