‘Largest IT outage in history’ caused by US-based cybersecurity firm

A worldwide cyber crash described as “the largest IT outage in history” brought down computer systems across Australia and parts of the world, crippling airport check-ins, supermarkets and emergency information services.

The outage struck just after 3pm on Friday, triggering delays at airports around the country and world, hampering internet banking systems and forcing laptops across the globe to suddenly shut down.

Checkouts at Coles in New Farm remained offline on Saturday morning following the CrowdStrike outage.Credit: Cameron Atfield

Cybersecurity expert and founder of the ASafaWeb security analysis firm Troy Hunt said it was “the largest IT outage in history”.

“This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time,” he said.

The federal government called a snap meeting of emergency authorities, and executives from Telstra, Optus, Coles, Woolworths, Qantas and Virgin on Friday night to respond to the unfolding chaos.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he understood Australians were “concerned about the outage that is unfolding globally and affecting a wide range of services”.

“My government is working closely with the National Cyber Security Coordinator,” he said. “There is no impact to critical infrastructure, government services or triple-zero services at this stage.

NSW Police confirmed triple zero was working, but that police information distribution services had been impacted. Victoria Police said it was able to receive and dispatch calls from triple zero, but some internal systems had been affected by the national outage.

Jetstar was forced to cancel all its flights in Australia and New Zealand on Friday night, impacting thousands of customers about to fly out for the weekend.

The airline said early Saturday morning their IT systems are “beginning to stabilise, and flights on Saturday, 20 July are currently planned to operate as scheduled.”

Overseas, the global crash forced American Airlines, United and Delta to ask the Federal Aviation Administration ground stop on all flights just after 5pm AEST.

In India, airlines were forced to issue handwritten boarding passes. In Europe, Berlin Airport cancelled all flights, while Heathrow suspended all flights to the United States. Travellers out of London’s biggest airport reported being unable to buy food as payment systems went offline.

The scenes were mirrored across Woolworths and Coles supermarkets in Australia as payment services failed and terminals shut down.

The outage was caused by a fault in the “Falcon sensor” used by US-based cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike. The sensor is installed on many business computers to gather security data. The fault had a major impact on Microsoft systems worldwide.

Late on Friday, CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz apologised for the software update that caused chaos around the globe.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this,” Kurtz told the Today Show in the US.

Kurtz said CrowdStrike had identified the bug and remediated the issue.

“Now we are working with each and every customer, to make sure that we can bring them back online,” he said.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.”

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said CrowdStrike had attended the federal government’s emergency meeting and had issued a fix for companies to reboot their systems.

“The company has informed us that most issues should be resolved through the fix they have provided, but given the size and nature of this incident it may take some time to resolve,” she said.

Transport, payment services impacted

In NSW, trains were cancelled on the Hunter Line between Newcastle and Dungog for safety reasons.

“Passengers are advised to delay their trips and make alternative travel arrangements,” a NSW transport spokesperson said. “There are no impacts to other modes of public transport and no impacts to the wider Sydney Trains network.”

In Victoria, payment services failed on trams in Melbourne, one of many transaction systems that collapsed, including at Woolworths and Coles.

ANZ’s internet banking also reported an “industry-wide issue” affecting the processing of some payments, but traditional transfers via BSB and bank account numbers are not impacted.

The Commonwealth Bank said its PayID services were unavailable.

Australia’s largest telecommunications provider, Telstra, said some of its systems had been impacted by the outage.

“The issue is causing some holdups for some of our customers, and we thank them for their patience,” Telstra said.

“There is no impact to our fixed or mobile network which continue to operate.”

No evidence to suggest a hack

National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said there was no evidence to suggest the mass outage was a hack or cybersecurity incident.

“I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon,” McGuinness said in a statement on X.

“There is no information to suggest it is a cybersecurity incident. We continue to engage across key stakeholders.”

Richard Buckland, a professor in cybercrime at the School of Computer Science and Engineering UNSW, said the crash was a worst-case scenario.

“This is more serious than a cyberattack, really, because it shows our systems aren’t even proofed against randomness,” he told the ABC.

Airports impacted by incident

The outage has caused the grounding and cancellation of flights across the United States. Delays swept across Sydney’s airport, hitting check-ins during the peak Friday travel rush.

“A global technical outage has impacted some airline operations and terminal services,” an airport spokesperson said.

“Flights are currently arriving and departing however there may be some delays throughout the evening. We have activated our contingency plans with our airline partners and deployed additional staff to our terminals to assist passengers.”

Long queues at Sydney domestic airport on Friday afternoon. Credit: Ben Grubb

Just after 9pm, Jetstar announced it had cancelled all its flights in Australia and New Zealand until 2am on Saturday.

“Our teams are working on recovery options and we will contact customers with updates as soon as our systems are back online,” a spokesperson said.

Jetstar said customers due to travel on Friday or Saturday could rebook or refund their flight.

Virgin Australia grounded its flights at 5pm but resumed boarding an hour later.

“Virgin Australia operations are continuing following a large-scale IT outage impacting multiple airlines and other businesses, however some cancellations and delays are expected,” a spokesperson said.

AFL fans were locked out of Marvel Stadium on Friday night an hour before the Essendon-Adelaide game started. TAB was also forced to suspend all betting services.

The outage caused upheaval in the media industry, affecting newspapers, radio and TV around the world. Britain’s Sky News, one of the country’s major television news channels, was forced off air.

Autocues failed in TV newsrooms across Australia, forcing presenters to improvise for hours. Triple J radio hosts had to rely on CDs and USB sticks to play music to listeners as their systems went down.

With Anthony Segaert, Ben Grubb, Lachlan Abbott and David Crowe

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