Top House lawmakers are demanding testimony from CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz regarding the global IT outage on Friday that impacted approximately 8.5 million Windows devices. The incident led to the cancellation of over 5,100 flights and incurred significant financial losses for some companies.
Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), head of the cyber and infrastructure subcommittee, sent a letter to Kurtz on Monday, requiring him to schedule a testimony before the committee by the end of the day on Wednesday. They aim to understand the cause of the incident, its national security implications, and strategies to prevent future occurrences.
Since the outage, its repercussions have continued to escalate. Delta Airlines canceled more than 800 flights on Monday due to ongoing IT issues stemming from a faulty software update. Federal officials have also alerted the public to phishing scams targeting affected customers, and CrowdStrike has detected malware attacks on some of its impacted clients.
“Recognizing that Americans will undoubtedly feel the lasting, real-world consequences of this incident, they deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking,” the lawmakers stated.
A CrowdStrike spokesperson told Axios that the company is in contact with relevant Congressional Committees and that briefing schedules may be disclosed at the discretion of the committee members. This may be the first of multiple congressional inquiries and hearings about the incident, with the Senate Homeland Security Committee also monitoring the situation and considering further actions.
