- The Pwnie Awards, a part of Def Con for 17 years, celebrates and poke fun at the successes and failures of researchers and the broader security community.
- Previous winners of the award in the “Most Epic Fail” category include Microsoft, Sony, X (formerly Twitter) and TSA.
One of the most sought-after hacking and security conferences of 2024, Def Con 32, concluded on August 11 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Like every year, the conference included several sessions, workshops, presentations, competitions and awards ceremonies related to hacking and cybersecurity.
An awards ceremony that has been part of Def Con for 17 years is the “Pwnie Awards,” which celebrate and poke fun at the successes and failures of researchers and the broader security community. This year’s categories included awards for bugs on mobile, desktop and in crypto, epic achievements, lamest vendor response and most epic fails.
The recipient of this year’s epic failure
Each year, members of the information security community nominate the best exploits and research they’ve seen, and a panel of experts determines the winners in various categories. Previous “winners” of the Most Epic Failure award include Microsoft, Sony, X (formerly Twitter), and the Transport Security Administration (TSA).
So who received the Pwnie Award for the biggest failure this year? You probably guessed it right. It was none other than cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, whose only buggy update resulted in a global failure of over 8.5 million Microsoft-based devices and cost companies around the world millions of dollars.
The winner should come as no surprise. The list of nominations for each Pwnie was released about five days after the incident, and there could have been only one clear winner for the Most Epic Fail award.
Despite criticism, strong backlash and even Complaints Following the July incident, CrowdStrike President Michael Sentonas came to the Def Con awards ceremony to accept the award in person, confidently holding it in his hands and facing the embarrassment head-on.
CrowdStrike wants every employee to remember the incident
At the awards ceremony, Sentonas told conference attendees it was important for the company to “acknowledge” its mistakes. He continued, “The reason I wanted the trophy is because I’m going back to headquarters. I’m going to take the trophy with me. It’s going to have a place of honor because I want every CrowdStriker that comes to work to see it. After all, our goal is to keep people safe, and we got that wrong. I want to make sure everyone understands that something like this can’t happen, and that’s what this community is about. So from that perspective, I want to say thank you.”
Although this gesture was received with great praise and applause from the audience, the company still has a long way to go to restore its reputation.
