Knock-on effects continue in Melbourne after global IT outage causes chaos
Services are slowly resuming after a major IT outage plunged Victorian businesses, services, supermarkets and banks into chaos on Friday, affecting hundreds of thousands of people across the state — but the fallout continues.
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A major IT outage plunged Victorian businesses, services, supermarkets and banks into chaos on Friday, affecting hundreds of thousands of people across the state.
The global outage, believed to be triggered by a faulty update from software security company CrowdStrike, began hitting Victorian businesses and companies from 2.30pm, with scores of computers statewide displaying the “blue screen of death”.
Despite the frenzy, Victoria Police confirmed the force was able to receive and dispatch triple-0 calls, with Ambulance Victoria and Fire Rescue Victoria also confirming there were no known impacts to its services.
The National Cyber Security Coordinator said it was “aware of a large-scale technical outage” affecting companies and services across Australia on Friday afternoon.
“Our current information is that this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies,” they posted on X.
“There is no information to suggest it is a cybersecurity incident.”
On Friday evening, a Victorian government spokeswoman confirmed there had been no impact to critical infrastructure or Triple Zero Victoria.
“We are working closely with the federal government to understand the impact of the outage,” she said.
Western Health had been affected, she said, with a number of back-up processes implemented to minimise impact to patient care.
“We are monitoring the impacts of the global IT outage and are enacting continuity plans for those services impacted,” she added.
Epworth Hospital was reportedly affected by a code yellow, but a spokesman denied this was the case and said no patients had been impacted by the outage.
Melbourne Airport anticipated delays into the night for some domestic services, but ensured there were extra staff on the floor to help passengers.
On Saturday morning, the airport said the outage affected check-in procedures for only some airlines on Friday evening.
“Most passengers were able to depart,” it posted to X.
“This morning, all airlines are online and can check in passengers.
“There may be an increase in passenger congestion today in our terminals as airlines process some delayed passengers from last night.
“Please allow a little extra time to check-in and thank you for your patience.”
The Herald Sun understands that passengers departing internationally on Jetstar and Scoot were experiencing the most issues, with low-cost airlines the most reliant on the technology impacted by the outage.
“Passengers arriving on international flights are being processed normally,” the airport posted to X on Friday evening.
“Domestically, Rex is unaffected, Qantas and Virgin are slowly processing passengers whilst Jetstar is experiencing a significant outage.”
Melissa and her family travelled to Melbourne on Tuesday for a holiday, but were on Friday evening unable to get home to Sydney.
Their first flight at 3.40pm was cancelled, before they were put on an earlier flight at 3.25pm, which was then also cancelled after a significant delay.
“I was looking at flights on Virgin but for the five of us, it would cost two and a half thousand dollars,” Melissa said.
Melissa and her family decided to stay at the Novotel and hoped to get home on Saturday.
The problems were also expected to hit people planning to fly to Paris for the Olympic Games.
There were also long queues at Marvel Stadium on Friday night, with people only able to get into the clash between Essendon and Adelaide after a delay of up to 30 minutes.
A Public Transport Victoria spokeswoman said there had been “no major impacts” across the metropolitan network, with a Metro Trains spokesman confirming that the outage had not affected the city’s train network.
But a V/Line commuters were hit with major delays after the regional network was put on hold in the afternoon.
On Friday evening, major banks were reporting issues with Pay ID transfers but payments could still be made by entering BSB and account numbers.
Countless terminals used by businesses across the state were also not accepting payments.
A Coles spokeswoman said the retailer worked quickly on Friday evening to get its systems back up and running at both its supermarkets and liquor stores.
She confirmed all Coles supermarkets were open and trading on Saturday, though some impacts of the outage may continue.
“Some registers may be temporarily unavailable while we fully recover,” she said.
“We are putting on additional team members to assist customers with their shopping and we thank everyone for their patience.”
A Woolworths spokesperson also said some of its checkouts “continue to be affected”.
“All stores are open and trading as normal for cash and cards. Saturdays are a busy shopping day and we have plenty of stock on hand,” they said.
“Some checkouts continue to be affected by the global outage, so we thank customers in advance for their patience and treating our team with respect.
“Following some disruption to a small number of orders last night, our online system is operating as normal with our team expected to pick and deliver thousands of orders over the weekend.”
A Woolworths worker on Friday evening said the entire system had been impacted, with self-service and eftpos checkouts down.
“Registers are only working off and on and cash purchases some of the time,” she said.
In Melbourne’s CBD, punters hoping to enjoy a Friday night on the town were forced to withdraw cash from ATMs.
Laura Scott, from Hawthorn, said she had to withdraw cash to “hopefully buy some drinks”.
“We were planning to hit Smith St and a few venues there might not even accept cash.
“I never usually carry cash so this is different for me.”
The Young and Jackson pub outside Flinders Street Station was turning away customers because it was only accepting cash.
Hoards of people were turned away because they did not have cash.
“We have sent staff and some security guards home because with cash only it will be a much quieter night,” he said.
University of Melbourne school of computing and information systems associate professor Toby Murray said CrowdStrike’s Falcon system “monitors the computers that it is installed on to detect intrusions and respond to them”.
“That means that Falcon is a pretty privileged piece of software in that it is able to influence how the computers it is installed on behave,” he said.
“For example, if it detects that a computer is infected with malware that is causing the computer to communicate with an attacker, then Falcon could conceivably block that communication from occurring.
“If Falcon is suffering a malfunction then it could be causing a widespread outage for two reasons: 1 - Falcon is widely deployed on many computers and 2 - because of Falcon’s privileged nature.”
RMIT Engineering Associate Professor Dr Mark Gregory said this was a “near global outage”.
“The reliance on centrally managed global software solutions can lead to significant security risks,” he said.
Additional reporting: Stephen Drill, Ian Royall, Sarah Petty, Carly Douglas, Athos Sirianos, Oscar Jaeger, Jack Colantuono, Erin Constable, Odessa Blain, Timothy Cox
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