‘Global outage’: Millions impacted by internet system crash

Companies across the globe are experiencing mass system crashes - including Australian media outlets, casinos, big four banks and tech companies.  Here is what we know.

Companies across the globe are experiencing mass system crashes - including Australian media outlets, casinos, big four banks and tech companies. 

Outages have been reported in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and India, and hit about 2pm.

It is believed the worldwide outage was the result of a failure with a software security company Crowdstrike, which aims to stop computers being hacked.

Star Casino in Sydney came to a standstill mid-afternoon, as did supermarkets, banks, and newsrooms including the ABC, SBS, News Corp, Nine, and Southern Cross Austereo. 

According to reports on X, desktops in Microsoft offices began shutting down "automatically" around 2.30pm.

The issue quickly spiralled into worldwide outages.

Aussie banks including, NAB, Suncorp, Bendigo, were impacted.  Jetstar flights were grounded on Friday afternoon, understood to be a result of the outage.

Prime Minister  Anthony Albanese issued a statement: "I understand Australians are concerned about the outage that is unfolding globally and affecting a wide range of services,” he said.

“My Government is working closely with the National Cyber Security Coordinator.

There is no impact to critical infrastructure, government services or Triple-0 services at this stage.

“The National Coordination Mechanism has been activated."

Top cyber security expert Alastair MacGibbon said the outage appeared to have been caused by a “process failure” at Crowdstrike.

Mr MacGibbon, Chief Strategy Officer at CyberCX, said the company appeared to have pushed out some bad code effectively “bricking” computers around the globe.

THE SCENE AT CROWDSTRIKE SYDNEY

It took almost three hours for the first worker to turn up to the office of the company at the centre of the tech crisis that crippled Sydney.

The local office of international tech security company are on the 18th floor of a plush high rise in North Sydney.

Despite the outage that brought Sydney to its knees occurring just after 2pm, the first worker arrived at the company’s office at 5.08pm.

The worker declined to comment.

It is understood the staff work remotely on Monday and Friday. That practice did not change even in the face of the outage that impacted about 50 major companies in Sydney, including airlines that grounded flights.

The Crowdstrike office in Sydney.

Cyber security experts said the fault originated with a software update Crowdstrike pushed out to users from the US overnight.

WHAT IS CROWDSTRIKE?

 

Crowdstrike is a major player in the cyber security market, with few competitors, made famous when they confirmed Russia had hacked the US Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016.

Fellow cybersecurity firm CyberCX advised their customers that the outage affected those who have installed Crowdstrike Falcon in their IT environments.

"At this time, CyberCX is actively tracking the situation and are awaiting information detailing scope and recovery," they said in a statement.

There were reports that the shutdowns could have snowballed from a failure at Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, which had suffered a global outage earlier on Friday.

Executive director of cyber intelligence at CyberCX, Katherine Mansted, said there is no evidence of a cyber attack or breach, and while some services are coming back online, the fix will be “staged”.

“Crowdstrike has released a workaround for this issue to their customers, but unfortunately it’s not a ‘push the green button and switch everything back on’ solution - it’s something local IT teams will have to roll out,” she said.

While major organisations like the supermarket chains and banks would be well resourced and equipped to handle outages, smaller companies may be slower to reboot, Ms Mansted said.

“For some, frankly, this started late on a Friday afternoon, and it might not be much of a concern until they come back to work on Monday.”

As a result, Sydneysiders with Friday night and Saturday morning plans should plan carefully to make sure their travel or shopping won’t be disrupted.

While it’s “too soon to diagnose” exactly how the Crowdstrike failure came about, cyber and national security expert Mansted said, such incidents are “a reality in our digital age” that everyone has to prepare for.

“The scale of this outage reflects the dominance of this particular provider,” she said.

SYDNEY AIRPORT CHAOS

A Sydney Airport spokesperson said the outage had impacted some airline operations and terminal services”.

Sydney Airport

"We have activated our contingency plans with our airline partners and deployed additional staff to our terminals to assist passengers," the representative said. 

"Anyone travelling today should leave plenty of time to come to the airport and check with their airline regarding the status of their flight."  

Francesca and her partner Giuseppe

Francesca and her partner Giuseppe had no idea about the global outage and were shocked when they arrived at the airport. They were due to fly to see family in the Gold Coast at 6pm , but have accepted it might not happen. 

“We are just hoping we can fly even if we have to wait and they don’t cancel the flight.”

Sydney mother Maysa Chami has been waiting three hours at Sydney airport for her Jetstar flight to Queensland.

She and her five children don’t know if they will be able to make it to the state, where they were due to go on a holiday. 

“They are trying to get flights going, but they can’t fly past curfew. They have been handing out water, cheese and crackers though, which has been good.”

Crowds are building at supermarkets.

Sydney man Joshua Gibson, 34, was anxiously waiting for updates for his Gold Coast flight. The traveller was due to fly to Queensland to pick up his 5-year-old daughter Zoey, and has no idea if he will make it in time. 

“I’m going to the Gold Coast to pick up my daughter from family,” he said. 

The dad had no idea of the outage and was shocked when he arrived. 

Joshua Gibson

“I’ve been trying to check in online on my phone the whole way here. I don’t have any alternative arrangements to get to my daughter.”

At 6pm, Jetstar staff announced  that 12  flights had been cancelled, causing a rush of people to leave the building and others deciding what to do next. 

A Jetstar spokesman said it was an unprecedented event as he cancelled flights to Melbourne Adelaide Gold Coast and Hobart. 

Stranded Passengers were told no accommodation could be offered in Sydney. 

"Proceed home then once you receive cancellation notice from Jetstar then you can request a refund or rebook," he said, adding that was not possible until the outage was restored.

GOVERNMENTS RESPOND

A spokesman from the NSW Government said departments were "activating business continuity plans to ensure ongoing services".

NSW Police and NSW Ambulance advised members of the public to call 000 in an emergency, while a NSW Fire and Rescue spokesman said dispatch was unaffected though some units were relying on radios instead of truck touch screens due to their apps being affected.

The Australian Government is working closely with the National Cyber Security Coordinator on this unfolding outage.

Triple-0 services were currently not affected by this outage.

NSW Health confirmed that there were no known impacts on health systems or services.

A spokesman for the Australian Government said the outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies.

“As the Cyber Security Coordinator has said, there is no information to suggest this is a cyber security incident and they are continuing to engage across key stakeholders,the representative said.

“The National Emergency Mechanism group will meet shortly, co-chaired by the National Emergency Management Agency.”

 

SUPERMARKETS CLOSE

 

Some major supermarkets across the country closed during the afternoon, with customers turned away from checkouts.

Carolina Barbosa

Carolina Barbosa, a 31-year-old English teacher says the outages affected her grocery shopping.

Ms Barbosa has tried at two supermarkets in the CBD and was unable to get food and other needs.

“I don’t know, it’s madness,” she said. “After trying Coles, Ms Barbosa turned her attention to Woolworths at Town Hall. “I just tried Coles and the lines were massive.

“The problem is the screens are frozen, and they were still trying to process the last receipts.”

The self serves in most supermarkets across the city were long, with checkouts displaying a blue message with error.

About 7pm, a Woolworths spokesman said all but six of its stores nationally were open and trading. A small number of online orders were unable to be filled, and customers might find fewer registers available.

It is understood that no metropolitan services across the Sydney Trains network were impacted, with a government source confirming metropolitan lines are “holding firm”, but lines in the hunter and southern highlands have been impacted.

While the CrowdStrike outage took out mobile payment terminals, some ATMs, and supermarket checkouts were all taken offline, it could not take down the brickie’s laptop. 

Star Casino was hit by the attack and the was also TAB impacted but poker machines at pubs appeared to be unaffected.

It is understood the machines are not connected to computers, so they should not have been infected with Crowdstrike's corrupted patch.

There were some reports of card payment machines being down at pubs.

However, it appeared on Friday night that registered clubs escaped unscathed.

 

UPDATE COMING

 

The company at the centre of the IT crisis that crippled Sydney has finally fixed an "erroneous update" which shut down Microsoft PCs, a leading tech expert says.

 

Editor of techguide.com.au Stephen Fenech said the system failures were caused by security company Crowdstrike issuing a bad "patch" to its customers.

"That update wasn't accepted," he said.

 

As a defence mechanism, computers shut down.

 

Crowdstrike was initially unable to get into its systems to fix the problem.

"It's like locking your keys in the car," Mr Fenech said.

 

Just before 6pm, Crowdstrike had managed to find a solution.

 

"They've deployed a new update which resolves the erroneous update. What they're advising people to do is to run the update and then reboot for the update to take effect."

 

He described Crowdstrike as the "security guard" for Microsoft's cloud systems.