What just happened? CrowdStrike’s recent colossal outage, which brought down systems, communications, and transportation, shocked the world. Rather than ignore the mistake, the company decided to acknowledge the incident again, this time in one of the most visible (and funniest) ways possible: by accepting an award at the Pwnie Awards.
In 2007, security researchers Alexander Sotirov and Dino Dai Zovi launched the first annual Pwnie Awards, a ceremony honoring the best and worst performances of the year in information security. Since then, security experts and past winners have continued the annual tradition of selecting the best (and worst) in the industry.
Judges select winners in eleven different categories, including Best Cryptographic Attack, Most Innovative Research, and Epic Achievement. There are also winners (losers?) for some of the industry’s biggest failures. While you might think that Lamest Vendor Response would be the lowest category of the awards ceremony, there’s one step below that: Most Epic Failure. It should come as no surprise that this year’s winner was CrowdStrike.
Rather than shy away from the embarrassing award, CrowdStrike embraced the recognition head on. The company’s president, Michael Sentonas, personally attended the ceremony to accept the not-so-prestigious award.
CrowdStrike accepts the @PwnieAwards for the “biggest fail” at @defcon. Great performance. pic.twitter.com/e7IgYosHAE
– Dominic White �’� (@singe) 10 August 2024
In his speech, Sentonas was candid about CrowdStrike’s role in the incident, reiterating that the cybersecurity company’s efforts were “horribly wrong.” Despite the somber tone of the award, Sentonas sees it as an opportunity to help prevent incidents of this kind from happening again. In his speech, he stated that he will display the trophy at CrowdStrike’s headquarters to remind every employee of their mission and responsibility to protect the service’s global customer base.
Organizers held the Pwnie ceremony at the Las Vegas Convention Center, where this year’s Def Con 32 conference is taking place. Def Con is the world’s largest hacker conference and offers attendees access to security-related attractions, including guest speakers, workshops, exhibitions, vendors, competitions, entertainment, and the latest research. The conference attracts security fans from many countries; previous conferences have seen up to 30,000 attendees. The event’s audience ranges from hackers and security enthusiasts to federal law enforcement officials and industry cybersecurity experts.
