'Ex-CrowdStrike employee' hilariously takes credit for Microsoft outage in viral satirical video
A man named Vincent Flibustier, identifying himself as a former employee of Crowdstrike, claims in a video that a minor update he made to the company's system led to a worldwide disruption.
A major Microsoft outage on Friday caused employees globally to humorously celebrate ¡°Blue Screen of Death¡± Day. The IT disruption affected banks, airlines, media outlets, and more, leading to widespread inconvenience. However, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike later assured users that it wasn¡¯t a malicious cyberattack. The outages were linked to a software update that went wrong.
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Hours later, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz issued a statement, saying the ¡°defect¡± had been discovered. ¡°This is not a security incident or cyberattack,¡± Kurtz wrote on X/Twitter. ¡°The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed,¡± he added, noting that a corrupted content update for Windows caused the breakdown.
'I'm waiting for my letter of dismissal'
Once the confirmation was out, internet users saw an opportunity to make light of the situation. Social media was flooded with memes, with some users satirically claiming responsibility for the CrowdStrike update.
One such user, Vincent Flibustier, joined the bandwagon. Claiming to be a former CrowdStrike employee, he alleged on X that he had ¡°pushed¡± the ¡°little update¡± that led to the global Microsoft crash.
First day at Crowdstrike, pushed a little update and taking the afternoon off ?? pic.twitter.com/bOs4qAKwu0
¡ª Vincent Flibustier ? (@vinceflibustier) July 19, 2024
Flibustier shared an edited selfie of himself at CrowdStrike and released a now-viral video message, weaving a story about how he messed things up on his ¡°very first day on the job as a new system admin.¡±
He captioned his duck-faced selfie: ¡°First day at Crowdstrike, pushed a little update and taking the afternoon off.¡±
In a follow-up tweet, he expressed his frustration at being fired, calling it "totally unfair." The thread included a video where he explained the situation. He mentioned, "I'm waiting for my letter of dismissal."
In the video, he admitted to making a modification to CrowdStrike on his first day as a system admin, which led to a global issue. He said he was "very eager and excited" and made a small update to a line of code, optimising it slightly, but "maybe I shouldn't have." He got fired and was called back to work despite usually only working in the morning. He was told, "you should never put an update into production without testing, especially not on a Friday," to which he responded, "Well, it's not Friday; it was Thursday, and today is Friday." He defended himself by saying he had tested the update on his PC and it was working.
Fired. Totally unfair.
¡ª Vincent Flibustier ? (@vinceflibustier) July 19, 2024
Flibustier also tagged Elon Musk in a subsequent tweet, asking if the Tesla boss had a job for him. Although he continued to push the narrative, several netizens pointed out that a fellow X user, @nixcraft, had painted a similar satirical story about pushing a ¡°major code to production¡± on his first day at the cybersecurity firm. Keeping with his act, Flibustier also changed his X bio accordingly, which now reads, "Former Crowdstrike employee, fired for an unfair reason, only changed 1 line of code to optimise. Looking for a job as Sysadmin."
Verifying Flibustier¡¯s story
Despite some users being sceptical about Flibustier¡¯s claims, others believed his story. However, a close examination of French news reports soon debunked his efforts, revealing him as the controversial founder of NordPresse, a parody site accused of spreading confusion since 2016. The fact-checking revealed inconsistencies in his ¡°CrowdStrike photo,¡± which appeared to be manipulated.
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French news site ¡°liberation.fr¡± fact-checked his profile in 2023 for spreading fake news, and France TV did the same in 2021. Even back in 2018, MrMondialisation.Org published an exclusive interview with the NordPresse founder, exposing his antics.
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