Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike caused a global IT outage for airlines and banks, which likely disrupted your vacation or finances. Many people may have searched online for answers and found pictures of a fake Crowdstrike worker.
Shortly after the Crowdstrike debacle, Vincent Flibustier said on X (formerly Twitter) he “pushed a little update,” which coincided with the root of the issue.
This resulted in responses where many poured their anger and frustration towards the man online. But Flibustier is a satirical writer for the Belgian parody news site Nordpresse, and he did it to prove a point.
Why did he pretend to be a fake Crowdstrike worker?
NDTV reported that Vincent Flibustier appeared as a guest on France TV to explain his stunt. “People are drawn to stories that confirm their preconceptions,” the parody writer explained.
“No culprit named yet, I bring it on a platter, people like to have a culprit.”
READ: Outage, technological havoc worldwide caused by faulty software update
“The culprit seems completely stupid. He is proud of his stupidity. He takes his afternoon off on the first day of work.”
Flibustier’s X message had a doctored image of him in the Crowdstrike office, appearing to take a selfie. In the post, he likewise seemed to boast about pushing the update that caused the IT outage.
“This falls right into a huge buzz in which people absolutely need to have new information, and a fake is by nature new, you won’t read it anywhere else,” Fllibustier added.
READ: Websites globally hit by major internet outage
The parody writer also said people who initially posted the joke were in on it. Nonetheless, negative backlash snowballed as more people believed his fake Crowdstrike worker stunt.
At the time of writing, his X post had 4.5 million views and roughly 434,000 likes.
The IT outage took down airlines, banks, TV channels, and other industries worldwide, so it’s easy to understand the outrage. At the time of writing, many countries like the Philippines are still resolving the issue.
Crowdstrike apologized for the IT disaster and released a fix. Click on this Inquirer Tech article to see the troubleshooting steps.