In July, cybersecurity service Crowdstrike released a buggy update for its Windows PC-based services. The update caused millions of Windows PCs worldwide to crash and display BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) messages. It took down a number of companies and even critical government systems such as 911 and others for extended periods of time.

When the hacker conference DEF CON took place in Las Vegas last weekend, the event’s winner was announced. The 2024 Pwnie Award for the most epic fail went to CrowdStrike. Surprisingly, the company’s president, Michael Sentonas, was present at Def CON and accepted the award on stage.

The Register reports that Sentonas admitted in his acceptance speech that winning Most Epic Fail is “definitely not an award to be proud of.” He also said that the team at CrowdStrike was surprised that he decided to come to DEF CON to accept the award “because we got this terribly wrong.”

He added:

The reason I wanted the trophy is: I’m going back to HQ. 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 because our goal is to protect people and we got that wrong and I want to make sure everyone understands that this can’t happen and that’s what this community is about.

CrowdStrike released its own final report on the botched update last week and pledged to take steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. The company also said it would bring in “two independent third-party software security solutions providers” to look at the company’s code, quality systems and updates, but did not specify when the investigation will be completed.