• The global cyber outage caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update lost the company $25 billion in 12 days.
• Its shareholders are furious and are looking for compensation, launching a class action lawsuit.
• The lawsuit alleges that the company lied to investors about the prior testing of updates.

A class action lawsuit has been brought to software company CrowdStrike by its own shareholders who are accusing the firm of making misleading statements about its software testing. This is after the company pushed a faulty update without prior testing that knocked down 8.5 million Windows PC worldwide in one fell swoop.

Media around the world coined the subsequent mass PC downage a “global cyber outage” as airlines from the US to Australia, hospitals, digital service providers and banks around the world were unable to operate for a few days following the critical error.

Insurers are estimating that companies around the world collectively lost $6 billion following the CrowdStrike outage, and discussions have arisen around the practical implications, and consequences of so many different companies using one single provider in CrowdStrike to operate multitudes of different essential services.

According to the BBC, the lawsuit alleges that since CrowdStrike’s share price dropped 32 percent in the 12 days following the incident, its market value plummeted, losing an eyewatering $25 billion. Investors are outraged as they were led to believe by its executives that the company had a system to test updates prior to pushing them publicly.

CrowdStrike says that the case lacks merit.

Earlier in July, the company said it would increase its testing prior to updating any critical systems, and updates would be rolled out slowly instead of all at once.

It has denied the allegations contained in the lawsuit and says it will fight in court. It adds that most of the systems affected by the outage have now returned to normal.

This does little to assuage companies that were affected by the outage, with the CEO of Delta Airlines in the United States claiming that the incident cost it $500 million in just five days. Delta is now looking for some form of compensation from CrowdStrike, according to NPR.

It said that the incident occurred during the “busiest travel weekend of the summer” for the airline.

“We’re not looking to wipe them out, but we’re looking to make certain that we get compensated however they decide to for what they cost us. Half a billion dollars in five days,” said Delta CEO Ed Bastian.

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