Microsoft Outage: 'Fake' CrowdStrike Worker Claims Responsibility, Internet Reacts

Microsoft Outage: A day after a Microsoft error caused a massive IT outage, questions are mounting about the culprit behind the unprecedented disruption. The issue has been traced back to a faulty update of the 'Falcon Sensor' anti-virus program by CrowdStrike. Despite this revelation, many are still questioning how such a problematic update was allowed to be released and who was responsible.

Adding to the intrigue, Vincent Flibustier, an X user posing as a CrowdStrike employee, has claimed responsibility for the outage, touted as one of the 'largest' in the history. Flibustier generated a storm online with an altered AI photo of himself outside the CrowdStrike office, captioned: "First day at CrowdStrike, pushed a little update and taking the afternoon off."

The photo quickly went viral, amassing nearly 400,000 likes and over 36,000 shares within minutes. Two hours later, Vincent Flibustier posted an update claiming he had been fired from CrowdStrike. He also shared a short video where he humorously took 'responsibility' for the global outage.

Flibustier then updated his X (formerly Twitter) bio to fit the parody, stating: "Former CrowdStrike employee, fired for an unfair reason, only changed 1 line of code to optimize. Looking for a job as Sysadmin."

Despite his intentions to joke about the situation, many online took his satire seriously, believing he was responsible for the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) affecting their systems.

Microsoft Outage

The major internet outage disrupted flights, banks and businesses, as well as medical centers, around the world. The outage was caused by a faulty software update issued by a cybersecurity firm that affected its customers running Microsoft Windows.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.  "We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on NBC’s “Today Show” Friday. “We know what the issue is” and are working to remediate it.

He said the system was sent an update and the update had a bug in it causing a problem with Microsoft’s Windows operating system. “It was only the Microsoft operating system” that was affected, though it didn’t happen on every Microsoft Windows system, he said.