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Who's Vincent Flibustier? The Fake CrowdStrike Employee And Viral Twitter Hoax About The Microsoft Outage Explained
A man named Vincent Flibustier on Twitter / X has tricked many on the internet into thinking he was a CrowdStrike employee who got fired for the global Microsoft outage on his first day of work.
The tweet read, "First day at Crowdstrike, pushed a little update and taking the afternoon off ✌️." Then, of course, he said he got fired. The rapid fire of the cause and effect has captivated the platform, especially because Flibustier's X profile seems so real.
However, it's not real. Flibustier's trolling us. But, who is he? What happened with CrowdStrike and why would he be responsible? Let's explain.
How Did CrowdStrike Cause The Global Microsoft Outage?
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity software. It's a very trusted cybersecurity software. It's used by multiple Fortune 500 companies including banks, airlines and healthcare providers.
Out of these businesses, many of them use Microsoft operating systems on their computers instead of Apple. CrowdStrike failed on Microsoft computers because of a recent CrowdStrike update.
There was a bug in the code that caused Microsoft software to begin a reboot loop thereby crashing the computers and displaying the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death" or "BSOD."
This outage affected major internet infrastructure Friday morning. Airports were stalled. Banks were frozen. Entire corporations were put on halt. The CrowdStrike CEO has since apologized for the small error that produced big consequences, kind of like what was supposed to happen with the Y2K Bug.
CrowdStrike founder and CEO @George_Kurtz explains on TODAY what led to the global computer outages that began earlier today. pic.twitter.com/O3nbVWuNPI
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 19, 2024
What Did Vincent Flibustier Tweet?
At approximately 5:39 a.m. EST on Thursday, a Twitter / X user named Vincent Flibustier (@vinceflibustier) posted a tweet reading, "First day at Crowdstrike, pushed a little update and taking the afternoon off ✌️."
The tweet included a selfie, showing Flibustier in a blue hoodie, giving a peace and a duck face seemingly inside the CrowdStrike headquarters.
Flibustier started a thread of posts underneath his initial, starting with a reply reading, "Fired. Totally unfair." After that, he shared a video of himself talking about his purported firing, saying (with too many adverbs), "It was indeed definitely absolutely certainly me who did the CrowdStrike modification …"
Here's a short video to explain what happened..I'm waiting for my letter of dismissal. #Crowdstrike pic.twitter.com/bl4vPxX1E8
— Vincent Flibustier 👽 (@vinceflibustier) July 19, 2024
Who Is Vincent Flibustier? Is He A CrowdStrike Employee?
Vincent Flibustier is not a CrowdStrike employee. His tweet is entirely satire despite his X bio trying to trick you. Amid the hoax, it read, "Former Crowdstrike employee, fired for an unfair reason, only changed 1 line of code to optimize. Looking for a job as Sysadmin."
In reality, Vincent Flibustier is a satirical writer who runs the Belgian-based parody news outlet Nordpresse. French outlets have already covered him before.
So, Vincent Flibustier is a viral stuntman, likely aiming to market himself or just troll for the heck of it. His tweet reads like something Dan Hentschel would post but Hentschel definitely has better Photoshop skills. If you look closely at the top of his head, you can see the borders are a little wonky.
For the full history of Vincent Flibustier "First Day at CrowdStrike" Tweet, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's entry for even more information.
