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Microsoft’s lawyer accuses the airline of presenting a “false picture” of its actions following the July CrowdStrike outage.
Delta Air Lines is back in the firing line over its threatened legal action following July’s CrowdStrike outage, but this time, the one firing the shots is Microsoft.
Microsoft’s lawyer called out Delta over a lack of response to offers of help – much like CrowdStrike did this week – in a letter replying to one sent by David Boies, the airline’s lawyer.
Mark Cheffo, of law firm Dechert, said that while Microsoft felt for the issues Delta had to deal with following the outage, the picture painted by Delta is “incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation”.
Cheffo noted that the truth behind Delta’s struggles to recover from the outage was very different before pointing out that Delta repeatedly refused multiple offers of assistance that were made free of charge.
“Each day that followed from July 19 through July 23, Microsoft employees repeated their offers to help Delta. Each time, Delta turned down Microsoft’s offers to help, even though Microsoft would not have charged Delta for this assistance,” Cheffo said.
In a specific incident on 22 July, a Microsoft employee reached out to a Delta employee and said, “just checking in and no pressure to reply, but if you can think of anything your Microsoft team can be helping with today, just say the word”.
The Delta employee responded with, “all good. Cool will let you know and thank you.”
“Despite this assessment that things were ‘all good,’ public reports indicate that Delta cancelled more than 1,100 flights on July 22 and more than 500 flights on July 23,” Cheffo said. The lawyer also noted that Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, had made a similar offer to Delta CEO Ed Bastian but never received a response.
The letter also points out that such offers were likely refused because the systems Delta had been struggling to restore were not Microsoft platforms but IBM ones – and, according to Microsoft, outdated ones at that.
“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,” Cheffo said.
“Our preliminary review suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors, apparently has not modernised its IT infrastructure, either for the benefit of its customers or for its pilots and flight attendants.
“Given all this, my client was surprised to see your letter. This is particularly so given that CrowdStrike has acknowledged responsibility for the content update that caused the July 19 incident.”
The letter went on to explain the issues involved with giving third-party vendors kernel access to the Windows operating system, before stating that Microsoft will “vigorously defend itself” if any litigation is brought against it.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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