CrowdStrike President graciously accepts Pwnie Epic Fail award at DEF CON hacking conference

CrowdStrike President Michael Sentonas has graciously accepted a trophy for the “most epic fail.” The security software boss received the Pwnie award in person at the annual DEF CON hackers conference, in Las Vegas this weekend. An errant CrowdStrike software update was behind one of the largest IT outages in history, wreaking havoc with travel, banking, and healthcare networks around the globe.

As Sentonas took to the stage to accept his award, the host joked that the standard Pwnie trophy was “too small” considering the size of CrowdStrike’s dubious achievement. Indeed, this is one of the rare computer news events that was widely reported by mainstream news sites, due to its wide-ranging real-life effects.

Sentonas smiled wryly as he accepted the specially crafted towering Pwnie trophy, with the crowd cheering and whooping in its support. The CrowdStrike President started with the obvious, saying this Pwnie wasn’t an award to be proud of. And it was interesting to hear the Aussie say that his team was surprised that he decided to go to Las Vegas to pick it up in person.

The next portion of the acceptance speech was used to apologize to all those affected and restate that CrowdStrike knows it “got things horribly wrong.” Sentonas indicated that owning mistakes was an important part of his company philosophy.

The towering Pwnie trophy is returning to the firm’s HQ, the security firm head told the crowd. There, it will be a constant reminder that “these things can happen.” Hopefully, the reminder that no one is infallible will help prevent another outpouring of BSOD misery, which in this case affected 8.5 million Windows devices, perhaps more.

Not only individuals were affected but, as we mentioned in the intro, vital infrastructure for transport, banking, and healthcare were poleaxed by the BSOD-inducing CrowdStrike update.

The world’s largest hacking and security conference, DEF CON 2024, was held in Las Vegas over the weekend. Pwnie Awards, which celebrate and make fun of the achievements and failures of security researchers and the wider security community, are an important yet irreverent part of the annual schedule. This year, CrowdStrike’s Pwnie for Epic Fail wasn’t a surprise on the day, it was awarded early (in July) “due to extenuating circumstances.”